I'm Frederick student in the literary editor, and this is news and focus where we offer insights into those stories that matter.

One of the big highlights of the FT year is towards the end of the year, when we look back at all the books that have been published on, we get our experts and critics and some of our top writers to assess which of the books from the various genres, from economics, toe health, from politics to interiors are the best reads of the year that's gone by.

And it's a great pleasure to welcome Martin Wolf with me here.

He's done once again, a fantastic job in sifting through all the economics books that have crossed his table over the past 12 months, but in particular the last six months on DDE is going to give us an assessment off the types of books that we've had, the themes that they discuss and what he thinks are going to be the great takeaways from them.

Let's first get a just a kn overview of all the books that you've had a look at in this year, and particularly the last six months, what with one's mean, what, are there any great themes, or are there any books that really stand out?

What is astonishing to me is how many good books there are, and taking the year is our whole.

It's quite extraordinary and comes to over.

I think, about 30 books.

The themes are pretty clear.

First and biggest, I think, is capitalism and democracy in their relationship is there's a system in trouble.

I think we're still very much in the aftermath, off the crisis and in the slow growth and the rise of populism.

And all this is reflected very profoundly.

Another theme not quite as common as that one is trade and trade wars and the backlash against trade.

Well, that's clearly a very significant one as well.

There's some interesting thinking about a I.

I had to book combat in the previous list by Richard Baldwin, and now I've got one by Roger Bootle just here so that so clearly going to be a ah, a running theme as well.

They're sort of variants on some of these things, but I think these are the ones that clearly attracting a multiplicity of authors.

Basically, there are skin.

Is the system working right?

It's a big question that we, the ft led by you in a column that kicked off a whole new initiative by the F T.

The new agenda that we've been asking ourselves.

So you feel that we're part of a broader intellectual trend?

We are all responding to the same questions.

The system is not working as well as we would like either politically or economically.

You can either ignore it and pretend nothing's happening or respond to it.

And I think many righteous in economics as in politics and other subject.

And of course, we in journalism have to respond to these questions off the books that you in the red in the last six months, which are the ones that for you really stand out about inequality and why Thomas Philippon Arts book are the great Reversal isn't narrowly about inequality, but it's about Is capitalism working and a bubble?

Is capitalism working in the US?

And it is, I think, the most exciting economics book I've read because uses evidence very, very compellingly to argue that competition isn't really working in the US and that's quite controversial.

Working less than in the U, which is the whole camp, which is more controversial, and I think it's incredibly impressive.

I think the book by size and Zuckman on how the rich avoidant evade taxes most avoid them is also really important, because again, it's not just waving one's hands.

They've done a lot of work, and they've shown really quite compellingly and shockingly to me that the top 400 richest people in the U.

S.

Paying at lower average tax rate than any other group largest group in American society.

Old way down to the bottom 10% of the income distribution.

That's pretty shocking.

And so it's the evidence.

I'm very responsive to somebody who doesn't just talk about something very generally but actually produces evidence.

Tell us briefly then about the trade.

But as you say, this is a topic which was often what you know more on the margins.

But let impacts of the debate.

Kimberly Clousing has done a really good account of why progressive people should be in favor of trade.

I think this is a battle that has to be engaged in Italy in the U.

S.

Because I think liberal trade is a progressive cause, and she makes a very good case for it and basically arguing, as I've tried to do in my own writings, that the problems of the poor and the working class, the middle class not being caused by trade.

They've been caused by a lousy domestic policy, particularly us.

But not only the U.

S.

But to me the most important book is Paul Blue Stein's.

He's on the work we need on the origins off history off and current state of the U.

S.

China trade relationship.

And this is one aspect and at the moment, the central aspect of what is simply the dominant year political story of our lifetime, I think, which is the emerging rivalry and conflict between the US and China, which is shaping everything.

And he's done as he always does, a wonderful journalistic job of telling you what happened doing analysis of how it happened.

And I think anyone who wants a briefing of what's behind this, I'm taking us back decades as we should and putting it in context.

He's very balanced about what is real and what is quite wrong about the charges against China.

If that is a very important book on a very important topic right now.

Just so you and you mentioned earlier on you've bean doing this for several years and having babies expert over overviews and and telling our readers what one of the books that they need toe look out for.

Are there any new authors on the scene?

Knew economists that you think Wow, this quite exciting.

Never heard of this person or, you know, there have been a bit quiet until now.

Where you look, You think this is really interesting?

This is a new voice coming through.

Well, there are several books here by people I hadn't heard off before.

I mentioned Kimberly Clousing, Reed College.

I think Richard Davis has done a fascinating book on economic scene extremes.

Very much approach of a rather brilliant journalists.

I understand he worked for The Economist at one stage, and he went to see well, what happens when things go really, really wrong or which have really different.

And he comes out with a civil war.

Yes, suppose it in the middle.

That's really fat.

But it's so different.

A Mark Thomas.

His book 99% is a good solid right radical tome, if you like.

It's like, Ah, the occupy movement, updated but very well done has a Bush's account off.

How inequality, um, actually undermines growth.

Very important point.

I should stress that, uh, she she had to think tank in Washington, a relatively new, very well rehearsed summary of the evidence making the argument.

Not just that.

I know that the inverse it's not, as we used to think inequality is the price of growth.

But beyond a certain point, inequality has many consequences which seriously undermine growth.

And this is something economists have begun to realize.

And I think it's a very, very important contribution.

The final more new author to me, completely new is, um, just Katharina pissed or which looks at the code of capital, which looks at, well, what makes capitalism.

And it's sort of an obvious point.

But it's done in great detail, which is well, what makes capitalism is a ll the things that our property and how their property.

And it's not just objects, physical things, that sort of thing.

People used to think of property that all sorts of completely intangible things derivative contracts, ideas which have been attached to the idea of capital.

And she argues quite persuasively, that this is we'il this to the lawyers and that we understate underestimate the importance off legal arguments and legal processes in developing the entire economic system we have today.

In many respects, it's quite convincing on this really strangely things we would never really agree to if we were ever put Tow us collectively, is that a sensible former property will probably say no, some of them are really quite wit.

Could you give us an example?

Well, one of wth, um, uh, it's really very technical that I'm sure get the details wrong.

He's acting.

Millions will be in these on with derivative contracts.

Um, how bankruptcy adjusts in that situation.

And what I discovered is that there are people who never expect who are ranked above the most senior creditors because of the way the legal structure works.

And the implication is that people who thought they were protected in law because they're with senior credit, says turn out not to be.

And that's really quite shocking and is in the very technical details of these countries.

That's where you illuminate these things just on a I Roger Beatles.

But which is just that, Um What e.

I think you found this quite a sort of different take.

It had lots of views on how a I is coming for us or has already arrived.

Why?

Well, what most books on this subject are off the form.

It comes back to the tech hype that the world isn't got undergoing a fantastic period of never before seen upheaval.

Most jobs are going to disappear on DA, and therefore we have to be very nervous about all this.

The Rogers book is a nice corrective.

Generally our experience with these transformations and there'll be many.

Is there a T's?

Not?

Neither, then not necessarily is profound.

And they're not as quick as most people imagine.

Economists been grappling with this idea.

David Ricardo 200 years ago wrote about the possibility that machinery would generate permanent unemployment and, well, it can develop real shocks.

There's no question real adjustment problems, but Bhutto's argument is, well, we should be calm down and relax about this and not be too upset.

No, is that right?

I don't know, writes in that sort of lean, back relaxing spirit.

I want just out of all the books is there?

Is there anyone or maybe two more that you will you say this is a big book?

This is one that will stand the test of time.

People will talk about this in years to come at that level.

I've already mentioned Philippine up and his importance, but I think there are two books which challenge us in a rather interesting way, which I think I found particularly enjoyable.

One is a book by the German American ancient historian Valter Seidl, who wrote a wonderful book or the Great Leveler.

This book is called The Escape from Rome, and it's very essentially a story off the last 3000 years.

And his argument is what made Europe the crucible of modernity, that the continent, when new things happened onto which now China's responding so successfully.

What made it happen is that the universal empire disappeared.

So, she puts it, The best thing Rome ever did for us was disappearing.

And that's Ah, very much, I think, a counterintuitive you.

It's not original.

I mean, some people have argued this revolver is beautifully done.

The other book, which I enjoyed very much when I know he's being a bit controversial, which I reviewed these Dara natural polio and James Robinson's book The Narrow Corridor.

And it's a much more sophisticated and up to date vision of what liberalism means.

What is a free country as how does it happen?

And instead of being where they tended to be in why nations fail, you have the right institutions of the state, goes away their previous book and the state goes away and everything happens.

As long as the state imposes the rule of law, they've now got what I think is a much more sophisticated view, which is civilized societies.

Ah, the product of a balance between the powerful state.

You need a powerful state, but it has to be balanced by a powerful society in democratic institutions which fight against the state and force it to take account of society's desires.

And if you don't have that balance, you either end up with despotism, uh, or you end up with anarchy.

And this is what I think is really important, and why this is a significant development in their thinking is the it brings out the great fragility of civilization, which, of course, we learned in the twenties and thirties, but we thought we'd fixed all that and that we now knew out to duel.

Then the narrow corridors that is the wall.

The view is a narrow corridor is the path on which stable, liberal, democratic societies exist and function, and it's narrow and we could be pushed out of it.

And, ah that I think he's a book very much off and for our time.

So probably those are the two big books that that I think are likely to stand the test of time because they are addressing things that we're not going to stop.

What thinking about Well, on that cheery note, Martin, thank you very much and thank you.

I should also just say thank you very much for having read all the books for for us, for our readers.

I'm sure they will appreciate that.

And thanks for listening.

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