Book Bits: 5 October 2024

● Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown
Andreas Malm and Wim Carton
Interview with co-author (Malm) via NYTimes.com
Q: It’s hard for me to think of a realm outside of climate where mainstream publications would be engaging with someone, like you, who advocates political violence. (Just to be explicit about this: Malm does not endorse or advocate any political violence that targets people. His aim is violence against property.) Why are people open to this conversation?
A: If you know something about the climate crisis, this means that you are aware of the desperation that people feel. It is quite likely that you feel it yourself. With this desperation comes an openness to the idea that what we’ve done so far isn’t enough. But the logic of the situation fundamentally drives this conversation: All attempts to rein in this problem have failed miserably. Which means that, virtually by definition, we have to try something more than we’ve tried…. Political history is replete with movements that have conducted sabotage without taking the next step. But the risk is there. One driver of that risk is that the climate crisis itself is exacerbating all the time. It’s hard-wired to get worse. So people might well get more desperate.

● Myth of Money: Breaking Out of the Failing Financial System
Tatiana Koffman
Summary via publisher (Wiley)
In Myth of Money: Breaking Out of the Failing Financial System, renowned finance, crypto, and economics thought leader Tatiana Koffman delivers an insightful and informative take on the past, present, and future of money, and the rise of cryptocurrencies as a transformative force in the financial world. Koffman has witnessed multiple financial collapses firsthand—beginning with the fall of the USSR, when her family lost everything, followed by the subprime mortgage crisis that marked the start of her new career, and then the economic fallout of COVID-19. As Bitcoin gains its footing globally, she has observed its meteoric rise and catastrophic falls with a keen understanding that these are early steps of a system poised to redefine finance.

● Economy and Interest: A New Presentation of the Fundamental Problems Related to the Economic Role of the Rate of Interest and Their Solutions
Maurice Allais
Summary via publisher (U. of Chicago Press)
The essential work from the Nobel Prize-winning virtuoso of twentieth-century economics, translated to English for the first time. Few scholars advanced the frontier of economic modeling more than French economist Maurice Allais. Allais’s contributions—beyond his famous Allais’s Paradox—earned him the Nobel Prize and drew comparisons to the works of Paul Samuelson and even some modern mathematical behavioral economists. Allais’s accomplishments, however, went largely unread by non-Francophone readers due to the challenge of their translation for publishers. The effects of this gap are immeasurable. As Paul Samuelson wrote, “Had Allais’s earliest writings been in English, a whole generation of economic theory would have taken a different course.”

● Mastering the Data Paradox: Key to Winning in the AI Age
Nitin Seth
Summary via publisher (Penguin Business)
There are two remarkable phenomena that are unfolding almost simultaneously. The first is the emergence of a data-first world, where data has become a central driving force, shaping industries and fueling innovation. The second is the dawn of the AI age, propelled by the advent of Generative AI, that has created the possibility to leverage the data of the world for the first time. The convergence of these two, with data as the common denominator, holds immense promise and the opportunities are boundless.

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