Summer 2025 Book Recommendations
These are books I read recently and not necessarily published in 2025.
Forget everything you think you know about what makes civilizations thrive: Norberg's contrarian analysis of seven golden ages reveals that "openness, not resources" drives prosperity, demolishing the myth that natural endowments determine economic success. His most provocative finding challenges development orthodoxy by showing that societies like the Dutch Republic succeeded precisely because "they have nothing" - no natural resources, strong traditions, or even land - forcing creative solutions that resource-rich nations never develop. The book's most striking insight for policy makers: the Song dynasty's decision to tear down city walls (designed to separate social classes) unleashed unprecedented economic dynamism, suggesting that dismantling barriers to mobility matters more than building infrastructure. The Economist calls this "an anti-MAGA book with historical data" that punctures popular misconceptions about trade and immigration, showing how every golden age died when societies turned inward and chose perceived security over openness.
The shocking reality behind "recycling": the global waste trade is larger than global weapons, timber and wheat trades combined, creating a trillion-dollar industry that systematically dumps rich nations' toxic garbage on the Global South while maintaining the fiction of environmental responsibility. Clapp's revelations challenges every assumption about international cooperation: Ghana's import of electronic waste is perfectly legal, incentivized by the government, transforming what was meant to be a path to digital modernization into a colonial-style raw material extraction economy where "burner boys" process Western electronics for cents per hour. The ultimate irony: some of the gold in smartphones being burned in Ghana originally came from Ghana itself, creating a perverse circular economy where countries export their wealth, only to poison themselves processing it back.
by Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi
The most uncomfortable truth: Harvard's rigorous data analysis proves that diversity training - the foundation of billions in development spending since the 1960s - not only fails to change behavior but often makes bias worse through "moral licensing," where people feel entitled to discriminate more after attending workshops. Bohnet and Chilazi's finding challenges every assumption about capacity building: "it's hard to undo two million years of evolution" by changing minds, but simple system redesigns work instantly - blind orchestra auditions increased female advancement by 50 percentage points, while removing names from resumes eliminates hiring bias completely. The problem isn't individual prejudice but institutional design, meaning every "gender equality" program that focuses on training people rather than redesigning processes is not just wasteful but counterproductive. The kicker: when the US Patent Office allowed remote work four days per week, patent examinations increased by 4.4%, proving that "fairness" interventions often boost productivity more than traditional efficiency measures.
The most overlooked infrastructure isn't roads or electricity - it's addresses, and Harvard lawyer Deirdre Mask's globe-spanning investigation reveals how this "invisible infrastructure" creates poverty traps that dwarf traditional barriers to economic advancement. Her most devastating finding for development practitioners: in Kolkata's slums, the lack of a simple street address prevents 3 million people from accessing bank accounts, state pensions, and formal employment - making addresses more crucial for economic inclusion than microfinance or skills training combined. The counterintuitive insight: addresses weren't invented to help people navigate but "to find you" - they're fundamentally tools of state control that determine who counts in the formal economy and who remains invisible. Mask's research reveals the ultimate development paradox: house numbers, introduced during the European Enlightenment to enable modern policing and taxation, simultaneously created the foundation for both economic prosperity and systematic exclusion - meaning the very infrastructure that enables development also determines who gets left behind.
Harvard's leading algorithm ethicist delivers a critique of "smart city" ideology that dominates billions in development technology spending: MIT-published research proves that tech-centric urban solutions systematically create "cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality." Green's findings challenges every assumption about digital development: the problem isn't insufficient technology but "tech goggles" - the misconception that complex social problems can be reduced to algorithms and optimization, leading to solutions that entrench rather than eliminate inequality. His most counterintuitive insight: autonomous vehicles and intelligent traffic systems don't improve mobility - they repeat historic mistakes by prioritizing efficiency over community vitality, forcing out pedestrians and destroying the social fabric that makes cities livable. "Smart" policing algorithms don't reduce crime but "justify and perpetuate racist practices," proving that algorithmic governance often amplifies the very biases development programs claim to eliminate - meaning billions spent on digital governance tools may be systematically undermining justice and democracy.
Fressoz, a French historian, provides rigorous data analysis: there has never been an "energy transition" in human history - we don't replace old energy sources, we add new ones while consuming more of everything than ever before. Fressoz's shocking revelation that will upend every climate policy: the world burns three times more wood today than a century ago, consumes more coal than at any point in history, and produces record amounts of oil and gas - all while renewable energy expands, proving "transition" is complete fiction. His most uncomfortable finding for development economists: the entire concept of "energy transition" was invented by fossil fuel companies in the 1970s not as a genuine plan but as sophisticated greenwashing "to put off any meaningful change" - meaning decades of climate policy have been built on corporate propaganda designed to delay action. The ultimate paradigm-crushing insight: removing fossil fuels from the energy mix "will require something akin to an amputation" because energy sources are symbiotic, not sequential - coal mines need forests for timber supports, oil rigs are made of wood, and even today's smartphones require more oil (just for headlights on 1.5 billion cars) than entire economies consumed in 1900, proving that green development as currently conceived is thermodynamically impossible.
BBC journalist Zeinab Badawi's meticulous seven-year investigation across 30 African countries reveals that while Europeans were "still painting themselves blue and suffering from the Black Death," African empires were controlling global trade networks and producing the world's richest individuals. Mansa Musa of Mali, the 14th-century African king, was "the richest individual to have ever lived" - when he stopped in Cairo during his pilgrimage to Mecca, he gave away so much gold that "the price of gold plummeted by 25% and didn't recover for more than a decade," proving one medieval African's actions had greater impact on international markets than entire European nations. The ultimate colonial mythology that gets obliterated: the idea that Africa was "isolated from the rest of the world" - in reality, while Europe was in its Dark Ages, African kingdoms were engaging in sophisticated global trade, developing advanced mathematics and medicine, and building architectural marvels that influenced European intellectuals. The paradigm shift that challenges every development assumption: Africa wasn't the "recipient" of civilization but its originator - everyone on Earth today is either African or descended from African migrants, meaning development aid models are based on helping the continent that gave birth to human civilization itself.