The "expandable" book

One of my favourite television watching is Seinfeld which ran for almost a decade from its 1989 start and has 180 episodes. One of them has Kramer, the goofy neighbour, sell the idea of a coffee book with a small nestling table attached - duly appearing on a television talk-show to explain the idea. And, in that same spirit, I offer you the concept of the “expandable book”

As the guy who has actually argued that non-fiction books should be rationed, you might well ask what on earth I think I’m up to - that I am actually thinking of inflicting yet another book on readers. My response is that this is a short book which can expand into larger sizes! 

At the moment my book is just over a hundred pages – although it has hyperlinks to the larger book on which it is based (whose links in turn lead to what must be several thousands of pages of reading). So it’s a huge resource. The latest version is here 

It lists and comments briefly on the hundreds of books which have been written in recent decades about “the crisis”. In that sense, it has something in common with the “50 Classic” series by Tom Butler-Bowen although I can give only a tantalising sense of the worth of the books I reference - compared to the 5 or so pages which Butler-Bowen’s books average for each of his 50. 

But it lacked, as it still does, a conclusion….So I’ve selected a dozen or so useful-looking recent books to see if they will help me clarify things for the missing text – including the latest writing of people such as Noam Chomsky, Geoff Hodgson, Mariana Mazzucato and Jeremy Gilbert.

But, first, I felt I should remind you of the basic argument of each chapter 

Chapter Title	Thrust of chapter arguments	Supporting arguments
1. Critical junctures identified	History is written by the victors – and the sycophants who surround them. Events were generally much more finely balanced than their versions admit. There’s too much fatalism around	Covid 19 as a Critical Juncture Out of the Belly of Hell
2.Trespassing encouraged	Most leaders of organisations are in the grip of groupthink and need countervailing mechanisms of accountability to help them see new realities	Janis, t’Hart, Syed
3. Economics relegated	This intellectual discipline is deficient and yet has too much power. It needs to be brought down a peg or three	Steve Keen, Brian Davey’s ”Credo”
4. The Blind men probe the Elephant	Talk of capitalism and post-capitalism is too loose and reified. There are various equally legitimate ways of perceiving the “beast”	57 Varieties of Capitalism
5. A new social goal is sought for the commercial company	Shareholder value ignores other dimensions Cooperative and social enterprises employ more people than we think – but have to struggle for legitimacy	Paul Hirst Colin Mayer, Ed Mayo, Paul Collier,
6. Lessons of change explored	So much protest fails and few social enterprises have a multiplier effect. How do we create winnable coalitions?	Robert Quinn
7. Change agents and coalitions sought	Progressives are good at sounding off – and bad at seeking common ground	Common Ground – democracy and collectivity in an age of individualism Jeremy Gilbert
8. Bringing it all together	countervailing power