Books on economics and beyond

Those who want to keep up with the latest economics books, admittedly a niche taste, cannot do much better than follow Diane Coyle’s Enlightened Economist blog. The British economics writer somehow manages to read a huge number of books on economics. Those who want to know an overview of the latest forthcoming titles would do well to read her two recent posts on the subject (here and here ).

An alternative approach is to track down books that follow particular themes. For this the Browser has incorporated a format from what was previously known as the Five Books website. In each entry an expert is interviewed on their favourite five books on their specialist topic.

A recent example is Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London, on progress.  From my perspective his selection is profoundly anti-progress but at least it gives me some idea of where he is coming from.

Hopefully reading about books will encourage people to read more of them rather than being a substitute for it.