The Engaged Scholar – Expanding the Impact of Academic Research in Today’s World
By: Andrew J. Hoffman – University of Michigan
Society and democracy are ever threatened by the fall of fact. Rigorous analysis of facts, the hard boundary between truth and opinion, and fidelity to reputable sources of factual information are all in alarming decline. A 2018 report published by the RAND Corporation labeled this problem “truth decay” and Andrew J. Hoffman lays the challenge of fixing it at the door of the academy. But, as he points out, academia is prevented from carrying this out due to its own existential crisis—a crisis of relevance. Scholarship rarely moves very far beyond the walls of the academy and is certainly not accessing the primarily civic spaces it needs to reach in order to mitigate truth corruption. In this brief but compelling book, Hoffman draws upon existing literature and personal experience to bring attention to the problem of academic insularity—where it comes from and where, if left to grow unchecked, it will go—and argues for the emergence of a more publicly and politically engaged scholar. This book is a call to make that path toward public engagement more acceptable and legitimate for those who do it; to enlarge the tent to be inclusive of multiple ways that one enacts the role of academic scholar in today’s world.
Home in the World – A Memoir
By: Amartya Sen – Harvard University
Where is ‘home’? For Amartya Sen home has been many places – Dhaka in modern Bangladesh where he grew up, the village of Santiniketan where he was raised by his grandparents as much as by his parents, Calcutta where he first studied economics and was active in student movements, and Trinity College, Cambridge, to which he came aged nineteen.
Sen brilliantly recreates the atmosphere in each of these. Central to his formation was the intellectually liberating school in Santiniketan founded by Rabindranath Tagore (who gave him his name Amartya) and enticing conversations in the famous Coffee House on College Street in Calcutta. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, he engaged with many of the leading figures of the day. This is a book of ideas – especially Marx, Keynes and Arrow – as much as of people and places.
The Economic Integration of Europe
By: Richard Pomfret – University of Adelaide
The Economic Integration of Europe follows all the major steps in the creation of the single market since the postwar establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community. Pomfret identifies four stages of development: the creation of a customs union, the deepening of economic union with the Single Market, the years of monetary union and eastward expansion, and, finally, problems of consolidation. Throughout, he details the economic benefits, costs, and controversies associated with each step in the evolution of the EU. What lies ahead? Pomfret concludes that, for all its problems, Europe has grown more prosperous from integration and is likely to increase its power on the global stage.
Written by one of the world’s experts on the subject, this book accomplishes the amazing feat of succinctly reviewing and analyzing all dimensions of the complicated process of European economic integration from its origins through the COVID-19 pandemic. It is arranged to inform professional economists and non-economists alike; it is a superb text for students at all levels and an excellent reference for scholars interested in the economics of European integration.
Michael G. Plummer , Johns Hopkins University
The Banks Did It – An Anatomy of the Financial Crisis
By: Neil Fligstein – University of California, Berkeley
More than a decade after the 2008 financial crisis plunged the world economy into recession, we still lack an adequate explanation for why it happened. Existing accounts identify a number of culprits—financial instruments, traders, regulators, capital flows—yet fail to grasp how the various puzzle pieces came together. The key, Neil Fligstein argues, is the convergence of major U.S. banks on an identical business model: extracting money from the securitization of mortgages. But how, and why, did this convergence come about?
In this incisive and exceptionally clear book, Neil Fligstein describes how government action unwittingly helped shift the business model of American banks from long-term customer relations towards fee-based activities anchored in mortgage origination and securitization. By the mid-2000s, every part of U.S. financial organizations was oriented to maintaining this pipeline, at the cost of considerable risk-taking and even fraud. By offering a long-term view of the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis, Fligstein shows exactly how the banks, really, ‘did it’—and also lays blame at the feet of monetary experts and authorities, who never saw it coming.
Marion Fourcade, University of California, Berkeley
