More Books For Christmas

    Every few years I have suggested some books for your consideration as Christmas gifts. In 2017 I offered choices for those interested in history (see: "Christmas Shopping for Historians.") The list was more diverse in 2022 (see: "Christmas Book Shopping".) Last year ("Books for Christmas") contained some popular choices. There are other book lists from which to choose on MM and you may want to visit them since the older books might be in paperback and cheaper. 
  More recently, in two posts, I told you about books you could read because they were short. Here are a couple to read because you should. I should as well since the two listed I have not read, but will recommend anyway.
   If you are an admirer of Reagan who said, "I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help," then you should skip the first book. Reagan also thought that, "government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem," and the results of the last election indicate that many agree with him. So many, in fact, that perhaps the word "ungovern" should have been the word of the year, rather than "brain rot" which was. 

   The following information is from the Princeton University Press website, which should serve as a warning if you are one of those also suspicious of elites as well as the government. 

Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos: How a concentrated attack on political institutions threatens to disable the essential workings of government, Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead.

   "In this unsettling book, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum trace how ungoverning—the deliberate effort to dismantle the capacity of government to do its work—has become a malignant part of politics. Democracy depends on a government that can govern, and that requires what’s called administration. The administrative state is made up of the vast array of departments and agencies that conduct the essential business of government, from national defense and disaster response to implementing and enforcing public policies of every kind. Ungoverning chronicles the reactionary movement that demands dismantling the administrative state. The demand is not for goals that can be met with policies or programs. When this demand is frustrated, as it must be, the result is an invitation to violence.

   Muirhead and Rosenblum unpack the idea of ungoverning through many examples of the politics of destruction. They show how ungoverning disables capacities that took generations to build—including the administration of free and fair elections. They detail the challenges faced by officials who are entrusted with running the government and who now face threats and intimidation from those who would rather bring it crashing down—and replace the regular processes of governing with chaotic personal rule."

Some of the Blurbs

“Ungoverning is an essential book for our moment, starting with a title that deserves to become a touchstone in our political conversation. Brilliantly drawing together philosophical reflections on democracy’s obligations to its citizens with a lively practical sense of how government works, Muirhead and Rosenblum offer a passionate defense of the now contested work of making our society fairer, safer, and more responsive.”—E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent.

"An illuminating — and alarming — book. . . . Muirhead and Rosenblum finished ‘Ungoverning’ before the 2024 election, but Trump’s ludicrous nominations — one already crashed in flames — serve as a sort of publicity campaign for the book’s thesis."—Ron Charles, Washington Post

“Ungoverning provides an unflinching and much-needed look at the threat posed by a new form of politics that actively seeks to undermine the core functions of government. Muirhead and Rosenblum deftly show how this alarming and uniquely nihilistic political philosophy helps define Trumpism and threatens democracy.”—Corey Brettschneider, author of The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.

    Once again, if you are a libertarian-leaning, Reagan-lover, you will not like this choice either. The Road to Freedom will also not be liked by those who like,The Road to Serfdom.
   What follows is from the publisher:

   "We are a nation born from the conviction that people must be free. But since the middle of the last century, that idea has been co-opted. Forces on the political Right have justified exploitation by cloaking it in the rhetoric of freedom, leading to pharmaceutical companies freely overcharging for medication, a Big Tech free from oversight, politicians free to incite rebellion, corporations free to pollute, and more. How did we get here? Whose freedom are we—and should we—be thinking about?

   In The Road to Freedom, Nobel prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz dissects America’s current economic system and the political ideology that created it, laying bare their twinned failure. “Free” and unfettered markets have only succeeded in delivering a series of crises: the financial crisis, the opioid crisis, and the crisis of inequality. While a small portion of the population has amassed considerable wealth, wages for most people have stagnated. Free and unfettered markets have exploited consumers, workers, and the environment alike. Such failures have fed populist movements that believe being free means abandoning any obligations citizens have to one another. As they grow in strength, these movements now pose a real threat to true economic and political freedom."

Blurb-like Comments

"Stiglitz is a rare combination of virtuoso economist, witty polemicist and public intellectual."

New Statesman

"Along with Krugman and Thomas Piketty, Stiglitz forms a triumvirate of leading economic critics of global capitalism, 21st-century-style."

Andrew Anthony, Guardian

"An insanely great economist."

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

"A towering genius of economics."

Independent

"A seer of almost Keynesian proportions"

Newsweek

The Road to Freedom ... seeks to reclaim the concept of freedom for liberals and progressives [and] calls for the creation of a “progressive capitalism'' that would look nothing like the neoliberal variant

John Cassidy, The New Yorker

Post Script:
   If you think you might be inclined to be a "Stiglitzian" read the review of three of his books in, "Why the Rich Are So Much Richer,"by James Surowiecki, in the New York Review of Books, Sept. 24, 2015

   The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them, by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Norton, 428 pp., $28.95

Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity by Joseph E. Stiglitz

Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Bruce C. Greenwald

Columbia University Press, 660 pp., $34.95; $24.95 (paper)

   "In the years since the financial crisis, Stiglitz has been among the loudest and most influential public intellectuals decrying the costs of inequality, and making the case for how we can use government policy to deal with it. In his 2012 book, The Price of Inequality, and in a series of articles and Op-Eds for Project Syndicate, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times, which have now been collected in The Great Divide, Stiglitz has made the case that the rise in inequality in the US, far from being the natural outcome of market forces, has been profoundly shaped by “our policies and our politics,” with disastrous effects on society and the economy as a whole. In a recent report for the Roosevelt Institute called Rewriting the Rules, Stiglitz has laid out a detailed list of reforms that he argues will make it possible to create “an economy that works for everyone.”....

   After all, the policies that Stiglitz is calling for are, in their essence, not much different from the policies that shaped the US in the postwar era: high marginal tax rates on the rich and meaningful investment in public infrastructure, education, and technology. Yet there’s a reason people have never stopped pushing for those policies: they worked. And as Stiglitz writes, “Just because you’ve heard it before doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it again.”