The
book has now expanded to 140 pages – each of which seems to have half a dozen
hyperlinks. That makes almost 1000 of them. The book still needs a proper conclusion
– but can be
accessed in its current state here. It's been constructed from the notes I have made over the years as I tried to make sense of what “experts”
were saying in the hundreds (indeed thousands) of books which have deluged us
about “the crisis”. Your eyes may glaze over when you come across some of the
lists which appear from time to time - so let me anticipate some of your
questions….
1.
Why should we
read it? After all, you’re the guy who said we needed to ration non-fiction
books!
And
that’s precisely why I have taken so long to write this damned thing…..at least
10 years. When
I wrote that post, I offered the reader some tests to apply to any new non-fiction
book. These included explaining what was distinctive about it; annotated
reading lists; typologies showing the variety of perspectives the field offers;
and visuals and other material to make the text less boring
2.
If you’re so
critical of economists, who do you mention so many Economics books?
The
majority of well-written books about the global crisis are actually not written
by economists! There’s a table in this section (page 46 or thereabouts) which
gives examples of the key books about the global crisis in 9 other disciplines
apart from economics
3.
OK but why
inflict so many titles on us?
Three
reasons – First, anyone who wants to be taken seriously in discussions needs to
be aware of some of the key names and titles in “the literature” – even if you
only flick a few pages to get a sense of their style
People,
secondly, differ in their tastes – and I’ve tried to structure the lists by
various categories to allow you to find what suits you…For example, p43 gives
you access to 8 introductory books which are great reads in themselves….
I
would agree, finally, that academics are too good at throwing bibliographies at
us. Indeed they overwhelm us with them – whether in footnotes, brackets or
end-pages. It’s almost a virility test with them. I get very frustrated with
this – since all these lists do is to flaunt their superiority – they don’t
actually tell us anything interesting about each book. And that’s why I decided
to try not just to list the more interesting of the books – but to add a few
notes to give readers a sense of whether it was their sort of book..
4.
Surely
neoliberalism has been discredited?
You
would think that, as the deregulation which was its hallmark blew up in our
faces, this would have led to a rethink but as Colin Crouch first showed in
2011 (and Philip Mirowski in 2013) the doctrine of commercialising anything
that moves has actually strengthened. Most people are still scratching their
heads to try to understand how this happened and why it seems so difficult to
put an alternative agenda together…
5.
Why can’t
progressives unite around an agreed agenda for change?
There
are a lot of egos at stake! But also so many different perspectives. And it is
a notorious fact of history that progressive forces tend to fight one another
more than “the enemy”. Understand that, and we will be half way to achieving
consensus
6.
Why should I
trust anything you say?
If
this is the first time you have come across my material, this is precisely the
question you need to pose..The only answer I can give is that you will see from
the blog I have had for 10 years that I try to keep an open mind on issues –
painfully aware of the legitimacy of the different ways of seeing things
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