5 books like Bonds Without Borders

By Chris O'Malley,

Here are 5 books that Bonds Without Borders fans have personally recommended if you like Bonds Without Borders. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism

Stephen C. Nelson Author Of The Currency of Confidence: How Economic Beliefs Shape the IMF's Relationship with Its Borrowers

From my list on politics that shaped international economic order.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born in North Dakota and raised outside of Minneapolis in the 1980s and 1990s, a period marked by the ascendance of global trade and finance. I got hooked on reading, thinking, and talking about the politics of international economic relations in college. Sufficiently hooked, I guess, that I applied to graduate school to try and make it my vocation. My research and teaching to this point have focused on how key political and ideational forces in domestic and world politics – namely, international organizations, shared economic beliefs, social conventions, and material interests – shape the governance of globalized markets and the crafting of countries’ foreign economic policies.

Stephen's book list on politics that shaped international economic order

Stephen C. Nelson Why did Stephen love this book?

I was in my first year of college when I witnessed (via news reports) the “Battle of Seattle,” where anti-globalization protestors shut down a negotiating round of the World Trade Organization.

Watching the news from Seattle made me want to study the politics of the international economy. Seattle seems to have had a similarly big impact on Slobodian since it pops up in the introductory and concluding chapters of Globalists.

Slobodian’s book tells the story of how a group of dissident economists and lawyers, mainly centered in Geneva, rewrote the postwar international rules to legally “encase” market-based transactions. This effort, which included the creation of the WTO in 1995, made markets more seamlessly globalized. But it also put the increasingly powerful market forces beyond democratic mechanisms of regulation and control, spurring backlash. 

By Quinn Slobodian,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Globalists as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

George Louis Beer Prize Winner
Wallace K. Ferguson Prize Finalist
A Marginal Revolution Book of the Year

"A groundbreaking contribution...Intellectual history at its best."
-Stephen Wertheim, Foreign Affairs

Neoliberals hate the state. Or do they? In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level. It was a project that changed the world, but was also undermined time and again…


Book cover of The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire

Perry Mehrling Author Of Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System

From my list on the forces making the global money system.

Why am I passionate about this?

My interest in money (understanding it, not so much making it!) dates from undergraduate days at Harvard, 1977-1981, exactly the time when the dollar system was being put back together under Volcker after the international monetary disorder and domestic stagflation of the 1970s. The previous decade had very much disrupted the personal economics of my family, perhaps in much the same way that the Depression had disrupted Kindleberger’s, and set me off on a lifelong quest to understand why. Forty years and four books later, I feel like I have made some progress, and hope that my book can save readers forty years in their own question to understand money!

Perry's book list on the forces making the global money system

Perry Mehrling Why did Perry love this book?

Browsing my shelves in preparation for this book list, this one in particular jogged my memory as an important influence on my own book, an influence so internalized that I completely forgot about and never cited it! I remedy that lapse here. 

My copy of the book is heavily underlined with lots of stars in the margin, so I know it was important. You can see from the title that the author is concerned with the same tension between money and empire, he as a historian and me as an economist.

Now that I have finished my own book, I’ll be rereading this early influence to engage with its argument more deeply and directly. 

By Harold James,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Roman Predicament as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Modern America owes the Roman Empire for more than gladiator movies and the architecture of the nation's Capitol. It can also thank the ancient republic for some helpful lessons in globalization. So argues economic historian Harold James in this masterful work of intellectual history. The book addresses what James terms "the Roman dilemma" - the paradoxical notion that while global society depends on a system of rules for building peace and prosperity, this system inevitably leads to domestic clashes, international rivalry, and even wars. As it did in ancient Rome, James argues, a rule-based world order eventually subverts and destroys…


Book cover of Money and Empire: The International Gold Standard, 1890-1914

Perry Mehrling Author Of Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System

From my list on the forces making the global money system.

Why am I passionate about this?

My interest in money (understanding it, not so much making it!) dates from undergraduate days at Harvard, 1977-1981, exactly the time when the dollar system was being put back together under Volcker after the international monetary disorder and domestic stagflation of the 1970s. The previous decade had very much disrupted the personal economics of my family, perhaps in much the same way that the Depression had disrupted Kindleberger’s, and set me off on a lifelong quest to understand why. Forty years and four books later, I feel like I have made some progress, and hope that my book can save readers forty years in their own question to understand money!

Perry's book list on the forces making the global money system

Perry Mehrling Why did Perry love this book?

My own book title is explicitly an homage to this book, which tells the story of the sterling standard in its heyday. 

It is my dream that readers will put my book next to this one on their bookshelves, reading mine as a continuation of the story that DeCecco tells so masterfully. He is more economic historian, and I am more historian of economic ideas, so the books are different (and his original was in Italian), but they can be read as in conversation with one another. 

This is another book that I look forward to rereading, now that I know more, and engaging more deeply and systematically.

Book cover of Promoting Global Monetary and Financial Stability: The Bank for International Settlements after Bretton Woods, 1973-2020

Perry Mehrling Author Of Money and Empire: Charles P. Kindleberger and the Dollar System

From my list on the forces making the global money system.

Why am I passionate about this?

My interest in money (understanding it, not so much making it!) dates from undergraduate days at Harvard, 1977-1981, exactly the time when the dollar system was being put back together under Volcker after the international monetary disorder and domestic stagflation of the 1970s. The previous decade had very much disrupted the personal economics of my family, perhaps in much the same way that the Depression had disrupted Kindleberger’s, and set me off on a lifelong quest to understand why. Forty years and four books later, I feel like I have made some progress, and hope that my book can save readers forty years in their own question to understand money!

Perry's book list on the forces making the global money system

Perry Mehrling Why did Perry love this book?

This book tells the story of the global expansion of the dollar system after the collapse of Bretton Woods from the perspective of the BIS, the global central bank.

Created in 1930, as a last-ditch effort to backstop the sterling system (among other reasons), the story of the BIS runs parallel to the story I tell in my book.  This morning in class I asked my students, most of them international relations majors, if any of their other courses had mentioned the BIS, and not a single hand went up. Hence this recommendation!

Kindleberger worked at the BIS 1939-1940 and might well have made it his permanent home had not World War II intervened, and sent him back home to the Fed.  

By Claudio Borio (editor), Stijn Claessens (editor), Piet Clement (editor) , Robert N. McCauley (editor) , Hyun Song Shin (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Promoting Global Monetary and Financial Stability as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As the global organisation of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has played a significant role in the momentous changes the international monetary and financial system has undergone over the past half century. This book offers a key contribution to understanding these changes. It explores the rise of the emerging market economies, the resulting shifts in the governance of the international financial system, and the role of central bank cooperation in this process. In this truly multidisciplinary effort, scholars from the fields of economics, history, political science and law unravel the most poignant episodes that marked this period,…


Book cover of The Precious Jules

Lena George Author Of She's Not Home

From my list on plumbing the gnarly depths of motherhood.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a writer, reader, and human, I’m drawn to complex stories about motherhood. It’s something we can choose, or something that can be forced upon us. Our relationships with our own mothers shape our entire lives. For my book She’s Not Home, I spent a lot of time deepening Sheryl, the mother’s, character. Early versions of the manuscript received criticism for her being too easily villainize. Too two-dimensional. Readers wanted a complex, heartbreaking character. I went to a very painful place to give Sheryl a richer voice. Here are a few books I love that also face the pain and complexity of motherhood and mothering head-on.

Lena's book list on plumbing the gnarly depths of motherhood

Lena George Why did Lena love this book?

I love the way this book peels back the layers of a mother’s choices and the scrutiny she faces for them.

Hillary Jules, the mother at the center of this story, does things some might find unforgivable. And yet we see, through both her and the woman who becomes a surrogate mother figure to one of her children, how we cannot know the full depth of another’s story.

This book reminded me how dangerous it can be to judge from the outside with phrases like “I would never.” Those judgments came much easier before I became a mother myself.

By Shawn Nocher,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Precious Jules as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Beautifully written...a great book club pick!" -- Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author

A deeply felt family narrative that examines the fine line between selfishness and what passes for love.

After nearly two hundred years of housing retardants, as they were once known, the Beechwood Institute is closing the doors on its dark history, and the complicated task of reassigning residents has begun. Ella Jules, having arrived at Beechwood at the tender age of eight, must now rely on the state to decide her future. Ella’s aging parents have requested that she be returned to her childhood home,…


2 book lists we think you will like!

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