2014 book list thread

I recently read "Conquest of the Incas" which isn't the kind of over-arcing history book I think you're looking for but it did give me a lot to think about. It's really well written too. The guy who wrote it is kind of an inspiration.

I don't have a book recommendation but Marxist history of economics is pretty interesting. The premise is that economic and "material dialectics" precede culture, and this in turn is also what drives technology. So for instance, imagine a village with demand for just 1 good, Apples. They just sleep on the floor, don't wear clothes, they don't even need to drink water. They just walk around, pick apples, that's it. Now imagine someone invented a basket so that she can harvest more apples in one go. A market for basket follows and perhaps a market for basket making schools. See where I'm going with this? Now you have teachers, school supplies, clothes, all kinds of demands. Subsequently cultural artifacts follows these markets. The implication is a kind of economic determinism, that we have little (conscious) control over the economy. No one ever sat down and laid out capitalism as a theory and sent out a memo to everyone. It just sort of happened via governing dynamics. (Ironically communism actually was influenced by intellectual thought, in this case perhaps culture preceded capital but I'm not saying the theory is right, just that it's worth reading about).

Marx was a big fan of Lincoln and his take on slavery and the American civil war through the lens of Marxist dialectics is really interesting, I'd read those first. Also really cool from a historical angle that there was a time when Marx was writing op-eds in European papers on Lincoln and bougie European upper class people would debate about it over dinner. So not a book suggestion but I'd look into essays or synopsis written on those topics. I've read some of Kapital but honestly I will never read the whole thing, way too dense lol. Anyway, most people associate Marx only with communism but he also has a lot of writing on economic history that's kind of overlooked. Wanted to mention that if you're looking for a super ambitious explain-everything type historical theory, Marx really does try and come up with a theory of everything for economic history, explains every bubble, glut problem, inherent instability of capital, labor vs utility theory of capital, etc.

Re: business books, I'm currently reading "The New Lombard Street". It so clearly lays out how monetary policy works, history of banking, and the currently state of the Fed. I'm only half way through but I get goosebumps from a freaking book about fiscal policy, that's how good it is.