GovernorsLibrary.org Top 6-10 Books Where Leading Minds Meet.

Top Books Reading List Continued:

1. Authors presenting vital information analyzing current world conditions and forecasts.

2. Nonfiction that is valuable for global governance to achieve a just society with restraints on government embodied in the Constitution of the United States of America as Amended.

6. Financial Darwinism: Create Value or Self-Destruct in a World of Risk, by Leo M. Tilman (Author), Edmund Phelps (Foreword), ISBN-13: 978-0470385463 Wiley (publisher), 2008, 172 pp.

Note: Edmund Phelps received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Rules for understanding the new financial order by introducing his evolutionary thesis and then outlines an actionable decision-making framework to enable financial institutions and investors to fully leverage the power of business strategy, corporate finance, investment analysis, and risk management in order to adapt and thrive.

7.   The Strategy of Conflict, by Thomas C. Schelling, ISBN-13: 978-0674840317, Harvard University Press, 2007, 328 pp.

Note:   Thomas C. Schelling shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics.

    Critical to understanding the conflict between the communist bloc and the USA as leader of the free world.

   Against the backdrop of the nuclear arms race in the late 1950s, Thomas Schelling's book The Strategy of Conflict set forth his vision of game theory as a unifying framework for the social sciences. Schelling showed that a party can strengthen its position by overtly worsening its own options, that the capability to retaliate can be more useful than the ability to resist an attack, and that uncertain retaliation is more credible and more efficient than certain retaliation. These insights have proven to be of great relevance for conflict resolution and efforts to avoid war. Schelling's work prompted new developments in game theory and accelerated its use and application throughout the social sciences. Notably, his analysis of strategic commitments has explained a wide range of phenomena, from the competitive strategies of firms to the delegation of political decision power. (Amazon review quoting The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences )

8.   Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century, First Ed., by Timothy J. Kehoe and Edward C. Prescott (Editors), ISBN-13: 978-0978936006, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (publisher), 2007, 475 pp.

   Note:   Edward C. Prescott shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics.

   The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s was a watershed for both economic thought and economic policymaking. It led to the belief that market economies are inherently unstable and to the revolutionary work of John Maynard Keynes. The authors use a common framework to study sixteen depressions from the interwar period in Europe and America, as well as from more recent times in Japan and Latin America, and challenge the Keynesian theory of depressions.

   The book develops and uses a methodology for studying depressions relying on growth-accounting and the general equilibrium models. Different chapters in this book analyze the depressions in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States in the 1930s, the depressions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico in the 1980s, and recent depressions in Argentina, Finland, Japan, New Zealand, and Switzerland. --Amazon review

9. [Was #12] Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History, by Jurgen Brauer and Hubert van Tuyll, ISBN-13: 978-0226071633, University Of Chicago Press, 2008, 424 pp.

    Note:    Cites Finn E. Kydland’s macroeconomics work. Finn E. Kydland shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economics.

    There is an introductory chapter on Economics explaining the concepts used. Each chapter has clear, useful matrices and charts througout the work summarizing the analysis applied. Readers unaquainted with Economics as a discipline ought not to be intimidated as the book is written for the general reader. And it is an engrossing read if history is an area of interest to you.

    "This study is serious, creative, important. As an economist I am happy to see economics so professionally applied to illuminate major decisions in the history of warfare." —said Thomas C. Schelling, University of Maryland, who shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics.

10. [Was #4.] Essentials of Economics, by Paul Krugman, Robin Wells, Martha Olney, ISBN: 978-0716758792, Worth Publishers, 2007, 471 pp.

Note: Paul Krugman received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics.

This is a textbook for those who do not intend to become professional economists. For anyone who wants and needs to understand the economy better.