STILL READING

Two books with almost the same title – something which always intrigues me – didn’t they realise? Is one actually improving the other? 

See for yourself..
The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Rentier Capitalism – the political economy of the 20th 
and 21st centuries Luiz Bresser-Pereira (2025)
The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Rentier Liberal Capitalism David Kotz (2017)

The Spirit of Place Lawrence Durrell (1956) One of my favourite writers turns 
his hand to travel
Abandoning Democracy for the Nation Filip Milacic (2026) This text about 
how democracy is being reversed by nationalism is one of those with the 
annoying habit of naming books as “elements”

The AI Mirror – how to reclaim our humanity in an age of machine thinking 
Shannon Vallor (2024) A philosophy professor writing about artificial intelligence 
sounds a good way into a subject I find rather boring

Wealth and Power ed M Bennet (2023)

Is political equality viable when a capitalist economy unequally distributes private property? This book examines the nexus between wealth and politics and asks how institutions and citizens should respond to it.

Theories of democracy and property have often ignored the ways in which the rich attempt to convert their wealth into political power, implicitly assuming that politics is isolated from economic forces. This book brings the moral and political links between wealth and power into clear focus. The chapters are divided into three thematic sections.

• Part I analyses wealth and politics from the perspective of various political traditions, such as liberalism, republicanism, anarchism, and Marxism.

• Part II addresses the economic sphere, and looks at the political influence of corporations, philanthropists, and commons-based organisations.

• Finally, Part III turns to the political sphere and looks at the role of political parties and constitutions, and phenomena such as corruption and lobbying.

Fred Harrison is an interesting and understandable economist with a fixation 
about land, explained in 3 books - 

• The Corruption of Economics Gaffney and Harrison (1994) 280pp

• Boom Bust – house prices, banking and the depression of 2010 Fred Harrison (
  1999-2005)

• The Silver Bullet Fred Harrison (The International Union for Land Valuation 2008)

Democracy in Hard Places ed Scott Mainwaring and T Masoud (2022)

They tame grasping, politically ambitious militaries; transcend influences and pressures from autocratic neighbors; and cope with polarized political parties. Without denying that democracy is easier to build and hold onto in societies that are free of such hurdles, this book asks what we can learn about strengthening democracy from those that managed to leap over them. By theorizing about democratic survival from such cases— which, in the parlance of social science, lie “off the regression line”— we capture what Michael Coppedge identifies as “the greatest potential to innovate and challenge old ways of thinking” (Coppedge 2002, 16). Are democracies in hard places the equivalent of lottery winners—Democracies in hard places overcome underdevelopment, ethnol dramatic exceptions to fundamental rules? Or is there something systematic that can be gleaned from such cases about how democracy can be erected and upheld around the world?

To answer these questions, this book presents nine case studies— written by leading experts in the discipline— of episodes in which democracy emerged and survived against long odds. The cases are drawn from almost every region of the world that formed part of what Samuel Huntington called the “third wave” of democracy, which began in southern Europe in the mid- 1970s, spread to Latin America in the late 1970s and 1980s, and to Eastern Europe and sub- Saharan Africa in the 1990s. Six of the cases are ones of long- term democratic survival— Argentina (1983– present), Benin (1991– 2019), India (1977– present), Indonesia (1999– present), South Africa (1995– present), and Timor- Leste (2002– present). The other three have more mixed democratic records— Georgia (2005– present), Moldova (1995– 2005, 2010– present), and Ukraine (1995– 98, 2007– 14). In each case, many of the conditions conventionally associated with durable democracy were either attenuated or absent.

Notes on a Foreign Country – an american abroad in a post-american world 
Suzy Hansen (2017)

Given my interest in writing about foreign places, this is one of the most insightful 
books about countries “revealing their souls” – despite being written by a young 
US woman  

Then 4 books by the same author who was first an adviser to 
Wilson and Callaghan and, eventually, a Minister

Downing St Diary – with Wilson in no 10 Bernard Donnoghue (2005)
volume two  - with James Callaghan (2009)
A Reluctant Minister under Tony Blair Bernard Donnoghue (2016)
Westminster Diary – farewell to office vol 2 Bernard Donnoghue (2018)

Great Planning Disasters Peter Hall (1981) Hall was an urbanist