Experts > George Magnus

George Magnus's Top Book Recommendations

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

1
Emerging markets are big news. But after the financial crisis, what does the future really hold for them? And what does this future mean for global business? George Magnus, one of the world's most respected economic analysts, is your guide through the challenges and opportunities for emerging markets and those doing business in them.

This magisterial book looks in detail at China and India - the big players - and also less hyped but crucial markets, including Eastern European countries and Turkey. Magnus takes in his sweep everything from commodity prices to climate change, and...
more
Recommended by George Magnus, and 1 others.

George MagnusThinking about the future, we have to be cognisant that it is perfectly within our capacity to screw up global integration and put up barriers, and fight each other. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

2
Shaped by his twenty-five years traveling the world, and enlivened by encounters with villagers from Rio to Beijing, tycoons, and presidents, Ruchir Sharma’s The Rise and Fall of Nations rethinks the "dismal science" of economics as a practical art. Narrowing the thousands of factors that can shape a country’s fortunes to ten clear rules, Sharma explains how to spot political, economic, and social changes in real time. He shows how to read political headlines, black markets, the price of onions, and billionaire rankings as signals of booms, busts, and protests. Set in a post-crisis... more
Recommended by George Magnus, and 1 others.

George MagnusHe brings a practitioner’s view and writes in a very accessible style. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

3

China 2030

Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative Society

China should complete its transition to a market economy through enterprise, land, labor, and financial sector reforms, strengthen its private sector, open its markets to greater competition and innovation, and ensure equality of opportunity to help achieve its goal of a new structure for economic growth. These are some of the key findings of China 2030, a joint research report by a team from the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China's State Council. This report lays out the case for a new development strategy for China to rebalance the role of government and market, private... more
Recommended by George Magnus, and 1 others.

George MagnusIt’s a plaudit for how far and how fast China has travelled in such an incredibly short period of time, but also a reality check. If you want to go to the next level, then things have to change. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

4
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West’s rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century secured its global supremacy. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many worry that the emerging economic power of China and India spells the end of the West as a superpower. In order to understand this possibility,... more
Recommended by George Magnus, and 1 others.

George MagnusOf all the books that left an indelible impression on my mind, this is certainly one of them. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

5

Why Nations Fail

The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are?

Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra...
more

Mark ZuckerbergMy next book for A Year of Books is Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson. This book explores the different kinds of social institutions and incentives that nations have applied to encourage prosperity, economic development and elimination of poverty. This is a good complement to our last book, Portfolios of the Poor, which focused on how people live in poverty. This one... (Source)

Bill Gates"I read two books that raise big, interesting questions about social change and technological progress. I’m planning to write longer reviews of each of these books, but let me flag them for you now. One is Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson.The topic of this book is why some countries have prospered and created great living... (Source)

George MagnusThe role of institutions is really important for societal development. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read George Magnus's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.