Page 82 - The Economist

Books and arts
82 The Economist December 9th 2017

Wise words Also in this section
Books of the Year 2017 85 Books by Economist writers in 2017

The bestbooks of2017 are aboutmusic, nicotine and the tsunami in Japan
The Road to Somewhere: The Populist
Politics and current affairs Revolt and the Future of Politics. By David Biography and memoir
Goodhart. Hurst; 278 pages; $24.95 and £20
The Retreat of Western Liberalism. By “Somewheres”, David Goodhart writes, Grant. By Ron Chernow. Penguin Press; 1,104
Edward Luce. Grove Atlantic; 234 pages; $24. are rooted, socially conservative and pages; $40. Head of Zeus; £30
Little Brown; £16.99 suspicious ofthe constant churn. By con- The historian who inspired “Hamilton”,
Few doubt that somethingbighas hap- trast, “Anywheres” are cosmopolitan, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical, argues
pened in Western politics overthe past socially liberal, internationalist and com- that America’s most improbable president
two years, but nobody is sure what. Tur- fortable with change. In creatinga new has been badly misunderstood. Instead of
moil in Washington and London contrasts political taxonomy, the British journalist beingseen as the overlord ofa corrupt
with centrist stability in Paris and (mostly) and founderofProspect magazine pro- administration (though it nevertouched
in Berlin. In this grim diagnosis Edward vides a useful way to thinkabout new him personally), he should be lauded for
Luce, a Washington-based commentator, cleavages in Britain and elsewhere in the the integration ofthe union afterthe civil
argues that the liberal ordercannot be West. Its influence is visible everywhere. warand his insistence on namingblacks,
fixed without a clearview ofwhat has Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Jews and native Americans to federal
gone wrong. positions.
Japan’s Disaster Zone. By Richard Lloyd
Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee Parry. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 276 pages; The Undoing Project: A Friendship that
System. By Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. $27. Jonathan Cape; £16.99 Changed Our Minds. By Michael Lewis. W.W.
Oxford University Press; 288 pages; $18.95. Ofthe 18,500 people who perished in the Norton; 362 pages; $28.95. Allen Lane; £25
Allen Lane; £20 Japanese tsunami in 2011, 75 were children Afascinatingintellectual biography of the
Lost in the row overEurope’s migration who died at school. But a single school Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman
crisis in 2015 were the millions ofrefugees accounted for74 ofthose deaths. This and Amos Tversky, two very different men
who stayed in the developingworld, mesmerisingaccount ofthe 120-foot-high whose workat the intersection ofpsychol-
unwillingorunable to journey to richer wave and its aftermath, by the Asia editor ogy and economics grows more influ-
countries. Growingup in a refugee camp and Tokyo bureau chiefofthe Times, ential by the year.
often means little education and no work. explores the uncharacteristicly fierce
Two experts at Oxford University present reaction ofthe dead children’s parents to Ali: A Life. By Jonathan Eig. Houghton Mifflin
the first comprehensive attempt in years to official evasion. In the process it tells you Harcourt; 630 pages; $30. Simon & Schuster;
rethinkfrom first principles a system that more about Japan than any conventional £25
has longbeen hidebound by hand-wring- history. The finest workofnarrative non- Muhammad Ali often claimed to be the
ingand old ideas. fiction to be published this year. greatest boxerofall time, and he was right. 1