100 books like Advocacy and Objectivity

Mary Furner’s book presents what is the common view of progressives as liberal reformers, but there is another side to progressive social science that is less liberal. 

The progressive era social science literature is replete with racism and with arguments about racial and other forms of inferiority derived from eugenics.

The vast amount of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe gave rise to concerns about the undermining of American standards, both biological and economic, including theories of “race suicide.” 

Leonard’s book has generated a great deal of discussion, and while there is no doubt that many progressives displayed eugenic and racist ideas, it needs to be stressed that such views were not limited to progressives, but included many of those with conservative and even free-market views in other areas.     

It is not often recognized just how significant the Rockefeller Foundation, and especially the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation (LSRM), was to the development of Economics in the United States. 

The story is quite extraordinary, starting with the appointment of a very young Beardsley Ruml to head up the LSRM, who led the way by funding economic programs and research institutes (University of Chicago, Social Science Research Council, Brookings, National Bureau of Economic Research), with a particular emphasis on work that was empirical and aimed at social improvement and the solution of social problems. 

Ruml shared the philosophy of “science and social control” that was so central to the institutionalist movement.  

This book provides an excellent discussion of the various policy debates and conflicts that occurred within the New Deal, involving monetary policy, the National Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, as well as many other programs. 

Key to this was the shift away from “planning” and towards the greater use of fiscal policy and anti-trust that occurred after 1935 as the result of Supreme Court decisions. 

Institutionalists played a major role in all parts of the New Deal, but policies were often rather experimental. 

As various ideas were tried and discarded (for both economic and legal reasons), policy eventually arrived at an Americanized version of Keynesianism.     

For myself, one of the most remarkable and fascinating aspects of the recent history of economics has been the resurgence of free-market advocacy opposed to the more interventionist institutionalist and Keynesian policy ideas that dominated economics from the New Deal on through to the post-World War II period. 

Burgin’s excellent book charts this revival of pro-market thinking, focusing particularly on F. A. Hayek, the Mont Pelerin Society, the Chicago School of Economics, and gives an especially important role to Milton Friedman whose work was to influence both Reagan and Thatcher.    

This book challenges the notion that we should rely on the ideal as a guidepost. Set aside whether we could decide on an ideal; Gaus, a philosopher, makes a four-part argument against pursuing it. First, how could we contemplate the incomprehensible number of possible institutional, legal, and organizational configurations? We couldn’t. Second, the components of those configurations interact, resulting in a rugged landscape: the path to the ideal would not be entirely uphill, that is, it would require sacrifices. Hence, the book’s title. Third, owing to the interactions among choices, we cannot evaluate collective well-being in alternative configurations with any accuracy. What hubris to assume that we could. And finally, the landscape responds to our positioning, as we adapt our physical, organizational, and institutional (both formal and invisible) environments, we alter what we can achieve and what we desire.

First published in 1958, this is one of Hannah Arendt’s most influential books and in it she attempts to define the human condition in the aftermath of World War II, developing her concept “natality.” 

It’s a challenging book that I’ve wrestled with and argued with and never forgotten. It includes some of her most powerful and frequently cited passages about birth. Lately, I’ve been returning to its opening pages, in which she discusses the launch of Sputnik into space. 

She saw this launch not as an exciting technological breakthrough, but as a fateful repudiation of our earthly existence, an existence that was defined by birth with possibilities and limitations.

Although the concept sounds theoretical, this book is about very simple techniques on how to cheap and fast change urban spaces, streets, and plazas so that they are for people (not cars). The book provides a toolkit for conceiving, planning, and carrying out projects, including how to adapt them based on local needs and challenges. Tactical Urbanism can inspire and empower citizens, urban designers, land use planners, architects, and policymakers to become key actors in the transformation of their communities.

In this slim book, Ken Arrow – Nobel laureate and “one of the transcendent minds in the history of economics” – reveals with extraordinary clarity many essential truths about how the world works and why.

The first of these four essays is among the most eloquent and succinct statement about the core conflicts humanity faces: between the individual and society, between freedoms and collective obligation, between compromise and commitment.

Given that context, Arrow builds a framework for understanding the nature of organizations: their purposes, processes, and the central role of information. The clarity with which Arrow has developed this economics of information – an asset intangible and unmeasurable – reveals his genius.

The inquiry closes by considering the role of authority and responsibility; but throughout there are gems of insights in nearly every paragraph. 

This book provides a thorough treatment of all the basic economic tools that everyone needs to survive and thrive in today’s world. 

Stock is a natural teacher who uses her gift for taking the complex and making it simple. The topics are wide-ranging and the analysis is clear and convincing. Even those who think they are not interested in economics will find something to take with them after pursuing this well-written volume.

Joseph Femia has chosen 21 outstanding essays about Vilfredo Pareto, which are divided into three sections: Methodology, Social Theory, and Politics and Political Theory.

All 21 are important historical investigations of Pareto’s thinking. The best are two by Norberto Bobbio and those by James Lane and by A.J. Baker. Most importantly, Femia’s collection also contains S.E. Finer’s “Pareto and Pluto-democracy.”

As a philosopher who crosses several disciplines (sociology, economics, and theology), I really appreciated the way in which Pareto was shown in this book to transcend the boundaries between economics and sociology. There was no one except for Max Weber, who could move among disciplines as easily as Vilfredo Pareto.