Mordecai Kurz and Ashoka Mody for PS Book Recommendations

Your weekly reading inspiration, provided by PS contributors. The PS Book Recommendations newsletter. [View this message in a web browser.]( [PS Book Recommendations]( Welcome to PS Book Recommendations, your weekly source of reading inspiration, provided by PS contributors. This week’s edition features Mordecai Kurz, Joan Kenney Emeritus Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and Ashoka Mody, a visiting professor of International Economic Policy at Princeton University. Mordecai Kurz Recommends... Big Myth:]( [How American Business Taught Us Loathe Government and Love the Free Market]( By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway Kurz says: “Oreskes and Conway deliver an eye-opening exposition of the extensive efforts by powerful corporate interests and wealthy individuals to convince the American people that unfettered free-market capitalism is the only way to guarantee their liberty. It traces the political development of the coalition that ultimately brought Ronald Reagan to power and ensured the establishment of a neoliberal economic-policy approach." Curse of Bigness:]( [Antitrust in the New Gilded Age]( By Tim Wu Kurz says: “Wu, a law professor at Columbia who has held several positions in the White House and government agencies dealing with antitrust, brilliantly synthesizes legal, administrative, and economic perspectives on the development of antitrust practices in the US since the 1980s. He also presents a detailed analysis of the way the Chicago antitrust project and Robert Bork changed the way US courts viewed antitrust. Particularly interesting is Wu’s exploration of the impact of Bork’s talent for simplistic reasoning on judges who had searched for manageable answers to antitrust cases, which they had often considered difficult to enforce." Don’t miss our PS Say More interview with Kurz on market power, Big Tech, antitrust, and more. [Read now](. PS Contributors on PS Contributors [Spin Dictators:]( [The Changing Face of Tyranny in the 21st Century]( By [Sergei Guriev]( and Daniel Treisman [Ashoka Mody]( says: "This engaging and frightening book argues that Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew pioneered a new kind of dictatorship based not on in-your-face brutality, but on a more subtle ruthlessness obscured by the apparent use of democratic instruments. Shut down universities with troublesome student bodies on the pretext of low enrollment; throw opponents in jail over charges of defamation or embezzlement – the possibilities are endless. The key, Lee determined, is to maintain the façade of democracy while you subvert it. And his playbook has since been copied and expanded, though Lee’s imitators almost never aspire to his economic success." [Read more from Guriev](. [PS Summer Sale: Save 40% on all new Digital and Digital Plus subscriptions.]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [LinkedIn]( Project Syndicate publishes and provides, on a not-for-profit basis, original commentary by the world's leading thinkers to more than 500 media outlets in over 150 countries. This newsletter does not entitle the recipient to re-publish any of the content it contains. This newsletter is a service of [Project Syndicate](. [Change your newsletter preferences](. Follow us on [Facebook]( [Twitter]( and [YouTube](. © Project Syndicate, all rights reserved. [Unsubscribe from all newsletters](.