Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves

Dan Ariely · 285 pages

The author, a behavioral economist challenges our preconceptions about dishonesty; we all cheat, whether it is copying a paper in the classroom, or white lies on our expense accounts. He explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of use, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards. He explores the question of d

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Hans Rosling · 342 pages

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages

*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell · 320 pages

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Reveals About Who We Really Are

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Steven Pinker · 802 pages

From Goodreads: Selected by *The New York Times Book Review* as a Notable Book of the Year The author of *The New York Times* bestseller *The Stuff* of Thought offers a controversial history of violence. Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as *New York Times* bestselling author Steven Pin

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 400 pages

Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day

Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, Orlanda Ruthven · 283 pages

The authors report on the yearlong "financial diaries" of villagers and slum dwellers in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa--records that track penny by penny how specific households manage their money. --from publisher description.

What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Michael J. Sandel · 256 pages

Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we allow corporations to pay for the right to pollute the atmosphere? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars? Auctioning admission to elite universities? Selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In this book the author takes on one of t

The Affluent Society

John Kenneth Galbraith · 291 pages

Galbraith's classic on the "economic of abundance" is, in the words of the New York Times, "a compelling challenge to conventional thought." With customary clarity, eloquence, and humor, Galbraith cuts to the heart of what economic security means (and doesn't mean) in today's world and lays bare the hazards of individual and societal complacence about economic inequity. While "affluent society" an

Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails

Duncan J. Watts · 335 pages

Discusses how the concept of common sense is inadequate in an increasingly complex world and draws on multiple disciplines to offer insight into the sources of such topics as popularity, economics, and self-deception.

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won

Tobias J. Moskowitz, L. Jon Wertheim · 278 pages

In Scorecasting, University of Chicago behavioral economist Tobias Moskowitz teams up with veteran Sports Illustrated writer L. Jon Wertheim to overturn some of the most cherished truisms of sports, and reveal the hidden forces that shape how basketball, baseball, football, and hockey games are played, won and lost. Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economi

Utopia for Realists: Why Making the World a Better Place Isn't a Fantasy and How We Can Do It

Rutger Bregman · 328 pages

From a universal basic income to a 15-hour workweek, from a world without borders to a world without poverty – it’s time to return to utopian thinking. Rutger Bregman takes us on a journey through history, beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he introduces ideas whose time has come. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think you

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism

Muhammad Yunus, Karl Weber · 271 pages

The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize outlines his vision for a new business model that combines the power of free markets with the quest for a more humane world--and he tells the inspiring stories of companies that are doing this work today. In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe, bringing with them enormous potential for positive change. But traditional capitalism cannot solve

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels · 56 pages

"The Communist Manifesto," penned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is a revolutionary treatise advocating for the overthrow of capitalist systems and the establishment of a classless society. Published in 1848, its succinct yet powerful prose remains a cornerstone of socialist ideology, inspiring movements worldwide.

An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions

Jean Dreze, Amartya Sen · 448 pages

When India became independent in 1947 after two centuries of colonial rule, it immediately adopted a firmly democratic political system, with multiple parties, freedom of speech, and extensive political rights. Maintaining rapid as well as environmentally sustainable growth remains an important and achievable goal for India. Two of India's leading economists argue that the country's main problems

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Paul Collier · 209 pages

"In this elegant and impassioned synthesis from one of the world's leading experts on Africa and poverty, economist Paul Collier writes persuasively that although nearly five billion of the world's people are beginning to climb from desperate poverty and to benefit from globalization's reach to developing countries, there is a "bottom billion" of the world's poor whose countries, largely immune to

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo · 320 pages

"Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of the work they do is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, flat out harmful misperceptions at worst. Banerjee and Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, super

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

Ellen Ruppel Shell · 296 pages

An Atlantic correspondent uncovers the true cost—in economic, political, and psychic terms—of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possibleFrom the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt—and almost everywhere in between—America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is

The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and The Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life

Uri Gneezy, John List · 288 pages

A colorful examination of why people do what they do--observed through the lens of incentives that can spur people to achieve--as reviewed by two superstars revolutionizing economics.

Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier

Edward L. Glaeser · 404 pages

**A pioneering urban economist offers fascinating, even inspiring proof that the city is humanity's greatest invention and our best hope for the future.** America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the 3 percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad rap: they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly... Or are they? As

Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class

Noam Scheiber · 384 pages

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character

Paul Tough · 256 pages

Why do some children succeed while others fail? The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool admissions to SATs. But in this book the author argues that the qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-con

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · 499 pages

In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, th