Book Bits: 31 January 2026

● It’s on You: How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society’s Deepest Problems
Nick Chater and George Loewenstein
Summary via publisher (Basic Venture)
Two decades ago, behavioral economics burst from academia to the halls of power, on both sides of the Atlantic, with the promise that correcting individual biases could help transform society. The hope was that governments could deploy a new approach to addressing society’s deepest challenges, from inadequate retirement planning to climate change—gently, but cleverly, nudging people to make choices for their own good and the good of the planet. It was all very convenient, and false. As behavioral scientists Nick Chater and George Loewenstein show in It’s on You, nudges rarely work, and divert us from policies that do. For example, being nudged to switch to green energy doesn’t cut carbon, and it distracts from the real challenge of building a low-carbon economy.

● The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and the Planet
Ann Pettifor
Summary via publisher (Verso Books)
The global market in money – housed in the offshore ‘shadow’ banking system – holds $217 trillion in financial assets and operates beyond the reach of any nation’s taxman. Asset managers, private equity firms, and pension and sovereign wealth funds scoop up the world’s savings for investment and manage them as they choose, unaccountable to politicians or the citizens who elect them. Ann Pettifor links the activities of remote mobile financial markets to both the cost-of-living and climate crises. In an insane global casino, bankers are gambling with our future. When we foot the bill, no one but a few economists understands what has happened. The result is volatile, unpre­dictable and uncontrollable speculation in global commodities, pension, energy, and housing.

● Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention
Clara E. Mattei
Review via Jacobin
In Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, Clara Mattei dispels the anti-worker ideology that permeated mainstream economists’ analysis of Joe Biden–era inflation. Rather than treating macroeconomic challenges as technical problems with technical fixes, Mattei shows that economics under capitalism is fundamentally political in nature. While central bank technocrats present raising interest rates as a technical solution to inflation, the real effect is to raise unemployment and increase employers’ bargaining power over workers. The power of unelected technocrats to strengthen capitalist power reveals the class character and antidemocratic foundations of the capitalist economy.

● Why Socialism Struggles: Exposing the Economic Errors That Undermine Utopian Ideals
Doug Cardell
Summary via publisher (Greenleaf Book Group)
There are few issues more topical these days than government and the economy. Many political and public figures throw around terms like socialism, fascism, and capitalism without knowing what they mean or defining them for their audience. But understanding these systems and their issues is critical in helping Americans decide what ideas and proposals for action they should and should not support. In Why Socialism Struggles, economic policy expert Doug Cardell tackles this hotly debated topic with clarity, logic, and evidence. Doug explains why socialism consistently leads to inefficiency and the erosion of individual freedoms. Each answer builds toward a powerful argument: Despite its appeal in theory, socialism fails in practice because it misunderstands human behavior, incentives, and the role of prices in coordinating economic activity.

● Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic
Kenneth Rosen
Review via The Economist
Every author dreams of their book capturing the zeitgeist. Kenneth Rosen, a journalist and war correspondent, could not enjoy better timing. “Polar War” comes out just as Mr Trump has propelled the northern region to global attention. The book is a collection of reportage from different sites across the Arctic—from Alaska to the Norwegian island of Svalbard and from Swedish Lapland to Greenland itself. It is knitted together into a story of great powers competing over a region whose harsh geography imposes limits even on the abilities of superpowers.

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