The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature, recommended by Robert J Shiller
“You have to understand people first before you can understand how to devise an economic system for them” argues Robert J Shiller, the Yale economics professor and Nobel laureate. He chooses five books that explore who we fundamentally are, as human beings, and how that will determine the shape of a successful capitalism.
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1
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins -
2
Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
by Peter J. Richerson & Robert Boyd -
3
Guns, Germs and Steel
by Jared Diamond -
4
The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire
by Joyce Marcus & Kent Flannery -
5
The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition
by Michael Tomasello
The best books on Cultural Evolution, recommended by Joe Henrich
The best books on Cultural Evolution, recommended by Joe Henrich
What role did culture play in human evolution? Why did human brains get so big so quickly? When and why did inequality first emerge in human society? Harvard professor and author Joe Henrich picks some of the best books for understanding ‘cultural evolution.’
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1
Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children
by Viviana A Zelizer -
2
Social Development
by H. Rudolph Schaffer -
3
The Roads of Chinese Childhood
by Charles Stafford -
4
The Child in the City
by Colin Ward -
5
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
The best books on Children, recommended by Jo Boyden
The best books on Children, recommended by Jo Boyden
We all know how children should be brought up, and rarely question the cultural norms that underly that certainty. But what does that mean for the policies we try to impose on the developing world? Jo Boyden, professor of international development at Oxford University and director of its Young Lives study, picks books that question our assumptions about how to successfully raise a child.
The best books on Virtual Living, recommended by Aleks Krotoski
‘There was a research study done in the 1960s that identified that people will open themselves up to a stranger on a train and tell them deep personal information they would never tell their closest friends, partially because they have this sense that they can confess.’