op_whatley13_yipengge_getty images_reading Yipengge/Getty Images

Global Bookmark

English

PS Commentators’ Best Reads in 2020

Alongside histories of past plagues and timely treatises on race, this year's list of recommended books includes deep dives into the toxic world of social media and trenchant studies in development economics. Like memories of this year, all are topics that will continue to weigh on our collective consciousness. 

After a year that offered no shortage of time for reading, Project Syndicate commentators share their recommendations of titles that stood out. With timely studies of politics, economics, and technology, as well as histories of war, disease, and ideas, this diverse selection provides both practical tools for confronting the challenges that await us as well as reveries through which to escape, if only briefly, the anxieties of our current moment.

Daron Acemoglu

Andrew Marantz, Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, Penguin Books, 2020.

Although I did not expect to love this book when I picked it up, I found it to be one of the best recent accounts of how social media has come to dominate political discourse in the United States. A staff writer at the New Yorker, Andrew Marantz offers a prescient warning about the huge unintended effects that unregulated technology can have on our society. It is a book that all techno-optimists would do well to read and reflect upon.

We hope you're enjoying Project Syndicate.

To continue reading and receive unfettered access to all content, subscribe now.

Subscribe

or

Unlock additional commentaries for FREE by registering.

Register

Support High-Quality Commentary

For more than 25 years, Project Syndicate has been guided by a simple credo: All people deserve access to a broad range of views by the world's foremost leaders and thinkers on the issues, events, and forces shaping their lives. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty, that mission is more important than ever – and we remain committed to fulfilling it.

But there is no doubt that we, like so many other media organizations nowadays, are under growing strain. If you are in a position to support us, please subscribe now.

As a subscriber, you will enjoy unlimited access to our On Point suite of long reads, book reviews, and insider interviews; Big Picture topical collections; Say More contributor interviews; Opinion Has It podcast features; The Year Ahead magazine, the full PS archive, and much more. You will also directly support our mission of delivering the highest-quality commentary on the world's most pressing issues to as wide an audience as possible.

By helping us to build a truly open world of ideas, every PS subscriber makes a real difference. Thank you.

Subscribe Now

https://prosyn.org/3OuBuNC