Jadrian Wooten and I recently did a podcast on some of the best economics books. You can watch the video here or check us out on your favorite podcast provider. (And please give us a 5-star rating and a positive review!)
In this post, I’ll take a slightly different route. I’ll highlight a few books (one is a book series) that are not economics books but provide some interesting economics lessons.
First, The Century Trilogy, by Ken Follett, is fantastic. It follows several families throughout the twentieth century and you’ll learn about what it was like to live through hyper-inflation in Germany, what living conditions were like in the early 20th century America (and elsewhere), and about living under communism in the Soviet Union.
I’m currently reading Outlive, by Peter Attia, about how he thinks the medical system can improve and how we can live better lives. Given the enormous value people place on healthy years of life, this book is incredibly thought provoking - both for me personally and for my thoughts on what societies should do.
Finally, I recently finished John Lennon 1980. It covers some of his life in the 1970s but mainly focuses on the last 12 or so months of his life. What’s fascinating is to
hear the accounts of his life and to realize how economic growth and technological change have impacted the world. A couple examples stood out.
First, the prices mentioned seem surprising, as they should given prices today in the US are about 3 and 1/2 times higher than they were in in 1980. Second (and spoiler alert), we learn about one situation in the book where John Lennon and his friend were off drinking and lost track of time. The big problem - Yoko was arriving on a plane, in a foreign country, and they were supposed to pick her up. That clearly wouldn’t happen today with the advent of the cell phone. Finally, they describe some of the process to create an album, and the whole process was so different.
Technological and economic growth have changed the world in the past 45 years.
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