• The best books on Geopolitics and Global Commerce - In the Beginning was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument by Bernard Williams
  • The best books on Geopolitics and Global Commerce - A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
  • The best books on Geopolitics and Global Commerce - Justice Among the Nations: A History of International Law by Stephen Neff
  • The best books on Geopolitics and Global Commerce - Legitimacy in International Society by Ian Clark
  • The best books on Geopolitics and Global Commerce - Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power by Xuetong Yan

The best books on Geopolitics and Global Commerce, recommended by Paul Tucker

For centuries humanity has struggled with how to build an international order based on law and agreed principles, rather than force and the threat of war. In today’s multi-polar world understanding how such an order might and could be shaped has taken on a renewed urgency. Here, Paul Tucker, a fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, chooses five books on geopolitics and global commerce.

  • The best books on Citizens’ Assemblies - Against Elections by David Van Reybrouck
  • The best books on Citizens’ Assemblies - The Government of Chance: Sortition and Democracy from Athens to the Present by Yves Sintomer
  • The best books on Citizens’ Assemblies - The End of Politicians: Time for a Real Democracy by Brett Hennig
  • The best books on Citizens’ Assemblies - Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century by Hélène Landemore
  • The best books on Citizens’ Assemblies - De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies edited by Min Reuchamps, Julien Vrydagh and Yanina Welp

The best books on Citizens’ Assemblies, recommended by Hugh Pope

Around the world, democracies are struggling with angry populations who are fed up with politicians who don’t seem to represent them effectively. Fortunately, there’s an alternative. Hugh Pope—a veteran reporter on the Middle East who also spent 15 years working for International Crisis Group—introduces us to the growing movement for ‘citizens’ assemblies’, where ordinary people get together to decide what’s best for the community. He argues that these assemblies have already been used effectively on important issues that are difficult for politicians to tackle and reveals how the French president, Emmanuel Macron, came to find out about them.

  • The 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing - The Fire of the Dragon: China’s New Cold War by Ian Williams
  • The 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing - Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival by Luke Harding
  • The 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing - Who Cares: The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving, and How We Solve It by Emily Kenway
  • The 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing - The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy by Philippe Sands
  • The 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing - The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule by Angela Saini

The 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, recommended by Martha Lane Fox

The Orwell Prizes are the UK’s most prestigious prizes for writing about politics, awarded annually to books and articles that best meet George Orwell’s own ambition “to make political writing into an art.” Martha Lane Fox, chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the shortlist of the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, awarded annually to a nonfiction book.

  • The best books on Language and Post-Truth - Language, Thought, and Reality by Benjamin Lee Whorf
  • The best books on Language and Post-Truth - The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality by Karl Popper
  • The best books on Language and Post-Truth - The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch
  • The best books on Language and Post-Truth - Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe by Hugo Mercier
  • The best books on Language and Post-Truth - The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't by Julia Galef

The best books on Language and Post-Truth, recommended by Nick Enfield

The word ‘post-truth’ may only have entered the Oxford English Dictionary in the last decade, but the phenomenon it describes is much older and deeper, connected not so much to the latest internet trend as the fundamentals of human cognition and communication. Here, linguistic anthropologist Nick Enfield, a professor at the University of Sydney and a member of its fighting truth decay research node, introduces the best books to get thinking about the complex relationship between language and reality.

  • The best books on Liberal Democracy - The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World by Larry Diamond
  • The best books on Liberal Democracy - Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency by Larry Diamond
  • The best books on Liberal Democracy - How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Daniel Ziblatt & Steven Levitsky
  • The best books on Liberal Democracy - Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition by Robert Dahl
  • The best books on Liberal Democracy - Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

The best books on Liberal Democracy, recommended by Francis Fukuyama

Even some of the world’s most authoritarian rulers continue to pay lip service to democracy and people’s right to vote for their leaders, but the days when many social scientists believed that all countries at a certain level of prosperity would eventually turn to liberal democracy are over, says Francis Fukuyama, now a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute. Here, he recommends books to better understand liberal democracy, and what those of us lucky enough to live in one can do to protect our form of government.