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Dambisa Moyo's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Dambisa Moyo recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Dambisa Moyo's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
“The revolution will be Twittered!” declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for all the talk about the democratizing power of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify their populations with digital entertainment. Could the recent Western obsession with promoting democracy by digital means backfire?

 

In this spirited book,...

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Recommended by Dambisa Moyo, and 1 others.

Dambisa MoyoI think it’s a brilliant insight, from a very young author from Belarus who lives in the West. Some people tend to dismiss his ideas because we live in a world where people believe what they want to believe. It’s like the aid world – everyone wants to believe that giving money to Africa helps. Everybody wants to believe that social media have been the reason why Iran, Egypt and other places have... (Source)

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2
An eye-opening investigation into china's communist party and its integral role in the country's rise as a global superpower and rival of the united states

China's political and economic growth in the past three decades is one of astonishing, epochal dimensions. The country has undergone a remarkable transformation on a scale similar to that of the Industrial Revolution in the West. The most remarkable part of this transformation, however, has been left largely untold—the central role of the Chinese Communist Party.

As an organization alone, the Party...

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Recommended by Dambisa Moyo, and 1 others.

Dambisa MoyoThis is why I think Richard’s book is particularly interesting. It’s a sneak peak into the way the Communist Party works. Clearly the Chinese government has succeeded in providing a policy environment that incentivises people to do things – to work hard, to make money – without it necessarily being democratic. Like it or not, they have a rule of law, they have some transparency – certainly enough... (Source)

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3
Understanding the rise of state capitalism and its threat to global free markets

The End of the Free Market details the growing phenomenon of state capitalism, a system in which governments drive local economies through ownership of market-dominant companies and large pools of excess capital, using them for political gain. This trend threatens America's competitive edge and the conduct of free markets everywhere.

An expert on the intersection of economics and politics, Ian Bremmer has followed the rise of state-owned firms in China, Russia, the Arab...
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Recommended by Dambisa Moyo, and 1 others.

Dambisa MoyoLet me tell you my understanding of Ian Bremmer’s view, both from hearing him speak and from reading his book. Bremmer looks at the East-West theme largely through a political lens. One of his quips encapsulates his fundamental view: “In the Rest the state controls the corporations whereas in the West the corporations control the state.” My reading of his work is that in the West, the influence... (Source)

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4

This Time Is Different

Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the... more

Bill Gates[On Bill Gates's reading list in 2012.] (Source)

Francis FukuyamaReinhart and Rogoff are two macroeconomists who have done a marvellous job in bringing together a lot of historical and international data about how unstable financial systems are. The title of their book, This Time is Different, tells you the whole theme. In many respects, the Wall Street crisis was not at all different from Argentina or Britain in the early 1990s or any number of other crises... (Source)

Dambisa MoyoI think the more interesting story in This Time Is Different is what happens in the aftermath of bubbles, which links to what we were talking about before. In the case of the US, it’s still very reliant on tried and tested formulas to try to sort out economic busts – ie let’s just reflate this bubble by using relatively loose monetary policy and fiscal policy (think low interest rates, tax... (Source)

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5

Civilization

The West and the Rest

Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries

How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors.


Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest...
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Rupert MurdochCan't wait to start reading Niall Ferguson's new book, Civilization, The West and the Rest. Bet lots to think about. (Source)

Dambisa MoyoWhat I found interesting and what I like about this book is the fact that Niall takes a very broad look at the East-West theme. When people are looking at this issue of East versus West, or West versus the Rest, they tend to focus either on politics (which is very important and we’ll talk about that when we discuss Richard McGregor’s book on the Chinese Communist Party) or on economics. But there... (Source)

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