Bookseller Roxanne Coady recommends books with big ideas, refreshing perspectives, and a dose of reality to help welcome in the New Year on the Daily Beast.
From the piece...
Here are a few books that may help. A fine place to start might be Thomas Friedman’s newest book, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. He does not underestimate our challenges nor does he think it will be easy, but he does offer plans and ideas. And as always, he is engaging, practical. For the longer and British point of view I urge you to read Tony Judt’s Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century. He wrote these essays to counteract our losing touch with three generations of international policy debate, social thought, and public-spirited social activism and gives us the capacity to discuss vital issues of public policy. You may also want to look at The American Future by Simon Schama or the landmark biography George F Kennan: An American Life by Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis. Mr. Kennan was one of our most influential post-World War II diplomats and one of the finest, most gracious writers on matters of policy. For some good reading on two contrasting viewpoints, I recommend Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics by Nicholas Wapshott. John Maynard Keynes and Freidrich Hayek were monumental economists; their debates over big versus small government in the 1930s shaped much of our country’s modern economic policy, and their theories are still the basis of many of today’s heated debates. A provocative read from an entirely different point of view is The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey Sachs. It’s worth reading for a different perspective and a persuasive argument emphasizing good citizenship and mindfulness.
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