Books I've read 2014

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I regularly write blog posts about "books I've read recently", and just as last year, this blog post is a summary of all books I read during the year that has just come to an end. This is the third time I do this and just a last year I top this blog post off with my top recommendations for books I suggest you should read.

Just as last year, this blog post doesn't exactly summarise the books that I read during 2014, but rather the books that I wrote about in the blog during 2014. After starting the year off by writing about books that I read half a year earlier (August 2013), I've caught up some and most recently wrote about books that I read only a few months ago (October 2014). That makes a big difference as it's kind of a drag to have to go back six months and try to remember what I thought about the books I read back then. This blog post thus covers covers books that I read during the 15 months between August 2013 and October 2014. I more specifically wrote about "books I've read" in March-1, March-2, April, May, June, July, August-1, August-2, September, November-1, November-2 and December. During the 15 months in question I read 42 books and here they are:

March-1
Lars Ingelstam, "Ekonomi för en ny tid: Lärobok om industrisamhället och framtiden" [Economics for a new age: A textbook about industrial society and the future] (1995)
Åke Andersson and Peter Sylwan, "Framtidens arbete och liv" [Future work and life]  (1997)
Enrico Moretti, "The new geography of jobs" (2012)

March-2
Owen Jones, "Chavs: The demonization of the working class" (2011)
Guy Standing, "The precariat: The new dangerous class" (2011)
André Gorz, "Vägen till paradiset" [Les Chemins du Paradis/Paths to Paradise] (1983)

April
Victoria Widmark (ed.), "Kneg" [Hard work] (2006)
Victor Bernhardtz (ed.), "Skitliv: Ungas villkor på en förändrad arbetsmarknad" [Shit-lives: Young people's conditions in a changed labour market] (2012)
Isaac Rosa, "Den osynliga handen" [The invisible hand] (2011)
Roland Paulsen, "Arbetssamhället: Hur arbetet överlevde teknologin" [Work society: How work survived technology] (2010)

May
Alvin Toffler, "The third wave" (1980)
Emanuel Sidea, "Skräck och avsky i Euroland" [Fear and loathing in Euroland] (2013)
Christer Sanne, "Keynes barnbarn: En bättre framtid med arbete och välfärd" [Keynes grandchildren: A better future with work and welfare] (2007)

June
Shannon Hayes, "Radical homemakers: Reclaiming domesticity from a consumer culture" (2010)
Juliet Schor, "True wealth: How millions of Americans are creating a time-rich, ecologically light, small-scale, high-satisfaction economy" (2010)
Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, "What's mine is yours: How collaborative consumption is changing the way we live" (2010)

July
KTH Media Technology 5th year students, "The Future of News" (2013) - The book we printed with the students' final reports in my course The Future of Media
Thomas Homer-Dixon, "The upside of down: Catastrophe, creativity and the renewal of civilisation" (2006)
Michael and Joyce Huesemann, "Techo-fix: Why technology won't save us or the environment" (2011)
Joseph Tainter and Tadeusz Patzek, "Drilling down: The Gulf oil debacle and our energy dilemma" (2012)

August-1
Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century" (1972)
Norbert Elias, "The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations" (1939)
Marshall Sahlins, "Stone age economics" (1972)

August-2
Immanuel Wallerstein, "Historical capitalism" (1983/2011).
Immanuel Wallerstein, "World-systems analysis: An introduction" (2004)
David Graeber, "Debt: The first 5000 years" (2011)
Paul Seabright (ed.), "The vanishing rouble: Barter networks and non-monetary transactions in post-Soviet societies" (2000)

September
Barbara Ehrenreich, "Bait and switch: The (futile) pursuit of the American dream" (2005)
Tim Harford, "The undercover economist" (2005)
Helena Csarmann, "Berg-och-dalbanana: Jakten på den heliga G-kraften" [The roller coaster: The hunt for the holy G-force] (2007)

November-1
Jay Walljasper, "All that we share: A field guide to the commons" (2010)
Jeremy Rifkin, "The zero marginal cost society: The Internet of things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism" (2014)
Malcolm Harris and Neal Gorenflo, "Share or die: Voices of the gest lost generation in the age of crisis" (2012)
Lisa Gansky, "The mesh: Why the future of business is sharing" (2010)

November-2
Ugo Bardi, "Extracted: How the quest for mineral wealth is plundering the planet" (2014)
Andrew Nikiforuk, "The energy of slaves: Oil and the new servitude" (2012)
Michael Klare, "The race for what's left: The global scramble for the world's last resources" (2012)
Harald Welzer, "Climate wars: Why people will be killed in the 21st century" (2008/2012)

December
John Howkins and Robert Valantin, "Development and the information age: Four global scenarios for the future of information and communication technology" (1997)
Adam Greenfield, "Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing" (2006)
Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell, "Diving a digital future: Mess and mythology in ubiquitous computing" (2011)
Majid Yar, "The cultural imaginary of the Internet: Virtual utopias and dystopias" (2014)

Last year, I recommended seven books as suggested "best buys" (a combination of quality and price). I will stick to that and these are my eight recommendations for best buys this year:
- Rosa, "Den osynliga handen" (96 SEK)
- Ehrenreich, "Bait and switch" (117 SEK)
- Schor, "True wealth" (123 SEK)
- Nikiforuk, "The energy of slaves" (129 SEK)
- Graeber, "Debt" (161 SEK)
- Bardi, "Extracted" (180 SEK)
- Sanne, "Keynes barnbarn" (182 SEK)
- Homer-Dixon, "The upside of down" (194 SEK)

Have you read any of these books? If so, feel free to comment!

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