Published Book Reviews

The best way to keep up with the literature is to read, but finding time to read broadly without a deadline to focus attention is hard work. The solution I found is to write book reviews. That process not only forces me to read but also focuses my attention on what writers are trying to say rather than looking for something to fit into an argument of my own. Other academics will understand the difference between those two exercises immediately. This page is still a work in progress. I am listing the books I reviewed for Survival over the past four years together with the stable URL to the published reviews. When I get more time, I will go back over the past two decades. I will also add URL’s pointing to the books reviewed. These reviews are listed in reverse chronological order.

‘Economy.’ Survival 67:5 (2025) pp. 192-199.

  • Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control. Sean H. Vanatta. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024.
  • The Young Fed: The Banking Crises of the 1920s and the Making of a Lender of Last Resort. Mark Carlson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2025.
  • Dollars and Dominion: U.S. Bankers and the Making of a Superpower. Mary Bridges. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024.
  • King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World’s Dominant Currency. Paul Blustein. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025.
  • Reconsidering Central Bank Independence. Stan de Plessis, Andreas Freytag, and Dawie van Lill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.

‘Europe.’ Survival 67:3 (2025) pp. 193-200.

  • A Federalist Alternative for European Governance: The European Union in Hard Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.
  • Frontiers of Empire: Max Sering, Inner Colonization, and the German East, 1871-1945. Robert L. Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
  • Lost Fatherland: Europeans between Empire & Nation-States, 1867-1939. Iryna Vushko. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024.
  • Europe without Borders: A History. Isaac Stanley-Becker. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025.
  • Embedded Autocracy: Hungary in the European Union. András Bozóki and Zoltán Fleck. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2024.

‘Economy.’ Survival 66:5 (2024) pp. 222-230.

  • How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain. Peter S. Goodman. New York: Mariner Books, 2024.
  • The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers our Future. Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Koopstein. Cambridge: Polity, 2024.
  • How a Ledger Became a Central Bank: A Monetary History of the Bank of Amsterdam. Stephen Quinn and William Roberds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
  • Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization. Harold James. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023.
  • The Future of the Factory: How Megatrends are Changing Industrialization. Jostein Hauge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.

‘Europe.’ Survival 66:3 (2024) pp. 192-200.

  • Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State. Anna M. Grzymała-Busse. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023.
  • Goodbye Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land. Jacob Mikanowski. London: Oneworld Publications, 2023.
  • Divided They Fell: Crisis and the Collapse of Europe’s Centre-Left. Sean McDaniel. Newcastle: Agenda Publishing, 2023.
  • Deserved: Economic Memories after the Fall of the Iron Curtain. Till Hilmar. New York: Columbia University Press, 2023.
  • The Russia Sanctions: The Economic Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine. Christine Abely. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

‘Economy.’ Survival 65:5 (2023) pp. 177-184.

  • States and the Masters of Capital: Sovereign Lending, Old and New. Quentin Bruneau. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.
  • The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism. Clara E. Mattei. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022.
  • Why the West Is Failing: Failed Economics and the Rise of the East. John Mills. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022.
  • Capitalism: The Story Behind the Word. Michael Sonenscher. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.
  • Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000-1800. Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.

‘Europe.’ Survival 65:3 (2023) pp. 168-175.

  • How the West Lost the Peace: The Great Transformation Since the Cold War. Philipp Ther. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
  • Tainted Democracy: Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary. Zsuzsanna Szelényi. London: C. Hurst & Co., 2022.
  • Fragile Dreams: Tales of Liberalism and Power in Central Europe. John A. Gould. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021.
  • Europeanisation of the Contemporary Far Right: Generation Identity and Fortress Europe. Anita Nissen. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.
  • Understanding EU-NATO Cooperation: How Member-states Matter. Nele Marianne Ewers-Peters. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.

‘Economy.’ Survival 64:5 (2022) pp. 160-167.

  • Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be. Diane Coyle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
  • The Money Minders: The Parables, Trade-offs and Lags of Central Banking. Jagjit S. Chadha. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
  • The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022.
  • Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail. New York: Avid Reader Press, 2021.
  • Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century. J. Bradford DeLong. New York: Basic Books, 2022.

‘Europe.’ Survival 64:3 (2022) pp. 193-200.

  • Understanding Russian Strategic Behavior: Imperial Strategic Culture and Putin’s Operational Code. Graeme P. Herd. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.
  • Late Capitalist Fascism. Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen. London: Polity, 2021.
  • The Last Neoliberal: Macron and the Origins of France’s Political Crisis. Bruno Amable and Stefano Paolombarini. London: Version, 2021.
  • Ever Closer Union? Europe in the West. London: Verso, 2021.
  • Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics. Christopher J. Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

‘Economy.’ Survival 63:5 (2021) pp. 227-234.

  • The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything. Gottfried Leibbrandt and Natasha de Terán. London: Elliott & Thompson, 2021.
  • Dark Finance: Illiquidity and Authoritarianism at the Margins of Europe. Fabio Mattioli. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020.
  • Neoliberal Resilience: Lessons in Democracy and Development from Latin America and Eastern Europe. Aldo Madariaga. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.
  • Central Banks as Fiscal Players: The Drivers of Fiscal and Monetary Space. Willem Buiter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
  • The Mismeasure of Progress: Economic Growth and Its Critics. Stephen J. Macekura. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020.