Reviews and Comments

This book is a masterful historical analysis of the inexorably connected spheres of racism, wealth, and finance, as well as a compelling example of the folly in attempting to disconnect economic analyses from historical realities. Baradaran details the challenges of running Black banks as a commercial entity that need to remain a going concern while serving a smaller, financially risky customer base and trying to serve a social purpose. That financial risk is rooted in the US's history of slavery and racism, which is laid out in its economic context here.

For those hoping of an exhaustive, focused account of the Black banking sector specifically you will likely want a bit more on that topic after reading the book. I myself was hoping for a bit more here, but thankfully Baradaran cites lots of useful sources to follow up on.

Overall this is an essential book for those hoping to understand and improve the economy and economic and social justice in the US.

Most histories often look only at great powers, and histories of the colonial period in America are no exception. Spain, Britain, France, and more recently the Iroquois feature prominently, with only passing mention made to most other actors prior to the formation of the US. Stephen Warren presents a wonderfully researched, unique view into this world by focusing instead on the Shawnees, who took up migration wholeheartedly with the rise of these different powers and were constantly interfacing between these different, conflicting groups.

Warren blends archaeology, the written historical record, and modern oral history to present one of the most complete looks at a Native American tribe that I've seen. The interactions between technology, culture, climate, and politics that are mapped out and explored here are extremely insightful and leave one with a much richer view of the complex web of relationships that developed prior to 1800. If you're at all interested in this are of history I highly recommend it.

The kernel of this book is a compelling idea - that "meritocracy" is an unattainable ideal and the belief that we've attained it leads to horrible outcomes. Unfortunately Sandel stretches this book beyond that, claiming with at best circumstantial and often purely imagined justifications that the idea of merit itself is responsible for white America's current ills.

I say white America because Sandel doesn't address the radically different patterns that exist outside of the US and western Europe, and within the US anyone other than white people. The fact that non-college educated Black people, for example, voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election? Or that when included with white voters the fact that non-college educated people only preferred Trump by 7%? Not mentioned.

Beyond these cherry-picked stylized facts, Sandel conflates the current meaning of "merit" with its philosophical ideal, continuing to lump in issues with the current merit dogma with issues of income inequality. That's not to say there's not some relationship, but Sandel's assertion that this is the direct cause of massive income inequality in the US is made without any evidence beyond armchair reasoning and strains credulity given the voluminous research on the problem that he could have read/referenced.

There's a lot more I could complain about, but suffice to say that once you've digested the core point of the book you can probably stop reading. I'm sure Sandel has given recorded talks on the book which will probably convey the point better than the book itself and will avoid many of the more problematic claims it contains.

Daniel Richter delivers an extremely well-researched, insightful look at an area that I've called home for my whole life. While other books do a better job at illuminating the indigenous perspective than this one, Richter is unequalled at bringing the direct source material into the text, explaining the background (such as in the format of Calvinist conversion speeches), and clearly stating where direct evidence doesn't exist. As such, it provides the most unfiltered look at this pivotal era that I've ever encountered.

This book hit me more emotionally than others on the topic because he spends a lot of time laying out the history of places where I spent my childhood - Philadelphia - and my adult life - greater Boston. Being confronted with the meaning of street names in Natick and the origins of a 1600s church that is on my normal run route was deeply meaningful to me. I think this would still be very interesting even if you don't have direct experience with those places, but on my run tomorrow I will be able to name specific people who walked there four centuries ago, the horrible injustices that created the spaces I now enjoy, and how I can repay and honor those communities that have now moved to other parts of the country. Highly recommend

North American history is inextricably intertwined with colonization and genocide, and this book charts and analyzes that history by taking a more indigenous-centric and holistic approach. Starting in prehistory, Hämäläinen reviews the archaeological evidence of North American civilizations and the spread of people, agricultural practices, and technologies. With the arrival of Europeans the method shifts to one that reviews the written historical record, and it's here that my most significant issue with this book lies.

As far as I can tell, no oral history sources are included from indigenous peoples. I get why - it's much harder to collect and contextualize that kind of data - but it leaves much of this book still smacking of Eurocentrism until the 19th century.

Leaving that aside, this book provides an extremely rich, fresh analysis of the arc of North American development through the millennia and recent centuries, effectively putting to bed many self serving US and European narratives and highlighting the power and agency of indigenous people even through the heyday of US expansion. Highly recommend.

Mariana Mazzucato provides, with a few exceptions, an excellent overview of the assumptions that have been baked into modern economics - in particular, the conflation of price and value - and the problems that creates for economic policy. She convincingly points out the issues with this assumption in the traditional finance sector as well as government, and how this has likely stunted investment in the "real" economy.

The sections in this book on private equity and venture capital are fairly implausible. Mazzucato claims that VCs only bet on "sure things," but later discusses how a high percentage of startups fail. With private equity she also bemoans their ineffectiveness, while simultaneously discussing their relatively long fund time horizons.

The sections on the valuation of government services, what labor is accounted for in national accounts, and the inefficiency of much of the traditional finance sector are, in contrast, expertly argued. I would have liked a lot more time spent on how to approach teasing apart profit and rents, since while many examples are brought up there's no proposal for a general, holistic approach. Still, this book is overall an excellent addition to the canon of modern economic thought.

Margot Canaday provides a compelling look at the last ~100 years of sexuality and work in America, documenting with archival evidence and interviews the evolution of how sexual minorities navigated their careers and drove changes to organizations and society as a whole. The heartbreaking choices people had to make in the past (and many transgender people still have to choose today) between taking low paying, precarious jobs where they could be themselves vs. careers almost necessarily capped by social norms that were nearly impossible to navigate, was sobering.

This book shines when connecting different time periods as well as Canaday's stunning, rich examination of the "Lavender Scare" period's bureaucratic machinery and counter-activism. The end of the book engages in a lot of speculation about the roots of current corporate support of the LGBTQ+ community without much evidence, and probably would be stronger without those sections. Still, even the sections covering the last few decades provided fascinating insight into how the tech sector, starting with Lotus and Bell Labs, in a limited way pushed the societal conversation around equal rights forward.

Overall this book is necessary reading for those hoping to understand work today and in the past, and the power (and limits) of organizations and individuals to create a more just society.