It’s summer. The solstice has come and gone even before we have had a chance to warm ourselves up at the beach and enjoy a good read in the sun. Which brings to mind Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts, who, when he was running for president in 1988, was pilloried by the press for having taken with him to the beach a report on the Swedish health care system. This was a man who was serious about his work and clearly enjoyed it.
I therefore dedicate this modest summer reading list to Gov. Dukakis and all those who take life seriously enough to play frisbee with the kids, have a good swim and tussle with the problems of the world all in short order. Most of the references are off the beaten track. All of them are articles, downloadable and relatively indifferent to sand, sea and soaking swimsuits.
For those who want to understand what happened to the finances of the western world over the last two years, one of the most interesting sources of information and analysis has been the London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/) which has run a series of articles on the world economic crisis that are not only technically informative but so well written that even a lay person can understand them.
Foremost amongst their writers is John Lanchester whose three articles on the financial implosion are a riveting documentary of our times. Cityphilia, (LRB 1/3/2008), written as the first signs of collapse were showing, addresses the unhealthy dependence of the city of London on the markets that had become so dominated by the unregulated, chimerical power of derivatives. Cityphobia (LRB 10/23/2008) was written after the crash and details the demise of Lehman Bros. and the Iceland economy amongst others.
Most recently, in It’s Finished (LRB 5/28/2009) Lanchester delves into the fate of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the biggest company in the world measured by its assets (who knew?). The creation of illusionary value through the merger with ABN Amro, the insidious toxicity of the subprime market, the opacity of the accounting system, the history of the balance sheet and the incompetence of auditors are all revealed in penetrating detail and acerbicly witty prose. A great read.
Read And Green
Rolling over on your beach towel to give your other side a good roasting you may now turn to global warming. Riding high on the tidal wave of literature on this subject, there are two outstanding (long) articles to be stuffed into the beach bag. Entering The Ecological Age: the Engineer’s Role is the Brunel Lecture for 2008 delivered by Peter Head, a director of Arup, the international engineering firm (http://www.arup.com) and advisor to governments worldwide. Head is an exceptional engineer, holistic in outlook, thoughtful in prognosis. In his lecture he presents not only a climatological and ecological analysis of global warming but also the social and economic consequences of these physical trends. As an engineer, he is not content with the nihilism of doom-and-gloom but outlines cogently and optimistically the “strategies and technologies for entering an ecological age”.
Lastly, the recently published report from the medical journal The Lancet and University College London, Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change (http://www.thelancet.com/climate-change) is an impressive policy document addressing the effects of climate change on public health, social equity and the world economy. Researched and written by medical researchers, clinicians, climatologists, ecologists, lawyers and economists (even a philosopher!), their work and their message applies to us all, most especially our children and their children’s children.
You can either read these on the beach or, alternatively, bury your head in the sand.
