Princeton University Press Authors

From a book about applying game theory to public policy to an account of how modern management practices were first developed on slave plantations, it's been another good year for interesting and accessible economics books. Cambridge professor Diane Coyle talks us through her selection of the best economics books of 2018.

At its worst, finance leads to crises and economic dislocation and, yet, it's absolutely vital to solving many of the problems society faces today. MIT's Andrew W Lo introduces some of the best books on finance and explains how it can change the world for the better.

Anthropologist and Afghanistan expert Thomas Barfield gives a panoramic view of Afghanistan, from founding dynasties  to the failed central Asian states of today. He picks the best books on Afghanistan.

Which are the best books on the Enlightenment? Jonathan Israel, one of the leading historians of early modern Europe, recommends his top five.

"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.

You don't have to be a professional arachnologist to study and get excited about spiders—nor do you need to travel away from home. The author of Britain's Spiders, Lawrence Bee, recommends all the books you need to become an amateur arachnologist.

With an array of intriguing and accessible books coming out, there's no excuse not to be reading about economics. The 'Enlightened Economist,' Diane Coyle, recommends the best economics books that hit the shelves this past year.

‘We’re on a path that is going to lead to tremendous destruction and yet most of us are going about our lives as if nothing particularly special is happening.’ The science of climate change is incontrovertible but deniers persist and political and economic solutions continue to be – systematically – frustrated. Time is running out, says Naomi Oreskes

We live in an age obsessed with self-image. Technology has made the ‘selfie’ a ubiquitous form of social currency. Renaissance means may have been very different, but celebrity artists in Medici Florence dealt with many of the issues relating to identity and authorship that we grapple with today. Maria Loh, author of Still Lives: Death, Desire, and the Portrait of the Old Master, talks to Five Books about the curated self.

The ‘subterranaut’ describes how the discovery of ancient bacteria miles beneath the Earth’s surface opens the possibility of finding life on Mars. He picks five books that show how our knowledge of life deep in this planet could lead us to discover it elsewhere.