What Scholars Will Be Reading This Summer

The degrees have been conferred, the mortarboards tossed — and now, here on campus, it’s summer (or will soon be.) What’s on your reading list?

We asked some of the smartest people we know — our Chazen Senior Scholars — what they’ll be thumbing through on the beach.

Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions

“Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy” by Douglas Irwin (2017, The University of Chicago Press). “Irwin’s book is the definitive history of US trade policy written as the crowning achievement of the great scholar of the topic.”

[Ed. note: Watch Douglas Irwin explain why “trade is not a zero-sum game.”]

“The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War” by Benn Steil (2018, Simon & Shuster). “This book is the first serious history of the topic written by an economist.”

Amit Khandelwal, Jerome A Chazen Professor of Global Business

“I Do What I Do” by Raghuram Rajan (2017, HarperCollins India.) “Rajan is a professor at the University of Chicago and recently stepped down as the head of the Reserve Bank of India. This is a collection of essays and notes from his time as RBI governor, and I chose this book because I was curious to hear his views on how to bring academic ideas into the policy world.”

“Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia” by Peter Pomerantsev (2014, PublicAffairs). “I’m going to a conference in Moscow this summer and several reviewers recommended this book as a particular take on Russia these days.”

“On Tennis: Five Essays,” David Foster Wallace (2014, Little, Brown and Company). “This is an old book, supposedly the best book on tennis ever written. I never read it during the height of my tennis days, so I’m trying to catch up.”

Shivaram Rajgopal, Kester and Byrnes Professor of Accounting and Auditing

“Economics for the Common Good” by Jean Tirole (2017, Princeton University Press). “This book encourages economists and academics to participate in public debates on how to make the world a better place.”

[Ed. note: Jean Tirole is the winner of the 2018 Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing. On June 19, see Jean Tirole in conversation with Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard.]

“Principles: Life and Work” by Ray Dalio (2017, Simon & Schuster). “This may sound like a pop management book but now that I have to manage people and run meetings, I found the advice invaluable.”

“The Tyranny of Metrics” by Jerry Z. Muller (2018, Princeton University Press). “Despite being an accountant, I am enjoying this book.  It highlights how metrics, once institutionalized, acquire a life of their own.  Consider citation counts and teaching ratings as examples.”

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