Apr 10, 2019
It's spring and soon will be summer. Five new and forthcoming books are already on our reading list. Let us know what's on yours.
1. Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero, by Tyler Cowen (out today)
- Cowen's productivity astonishes, starting with his must-read blog Marginal Revolution. An economics professor at George Mason, Cowen again goes against the grain with a spirited defense of big business.
2. The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, by Andrea Wulf (out April 2)
- Wulf follows up her gorgeous The Invention of Nature, a page-turner on Humboldt and the conceptual invention of a living Earth, with a graphic work on the 19th century explorer's life.
3. Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis, by Jared Diamond (out May 7)
- At a time of intense anxiety over our multiple simultaneous crises, Diamond — the Pulitzer-winning geographer-historian — documents how societies through time have overcome theirs, and then assesses our current predicaments.
4. Dignity: Seeking Respect in Backrow America, by Chris Arnade (out June 4)
- Several years ago, Arnade quit his job on Wall Street to wander U.S. backwaters — especially McDonald's — and deliver his findings and photos on his must-read Twitter feed. Now, he delivers his work at book-length.
5. The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, by Carl Frey (out June 18)
- In 2013, Frey and Oxford collaborator Michael Osborne created automation studies as we know them today with a paper asserting that 47% of U.S. jobs are vulnerable to robots. Now, he argues that — if the new age of automation turns out as "well" as prior tech cycles, as optimists predict — we should be truly worried.