Best Of Book Bits 2017

Another year (almost) over, but before the new one begins let’s highlight ten books focusing on money, investing, and economics that were published in 2017 and showed up in The Capital Spectator’s weekly Book Bits column at some point over the past 12 months. For one reason or another, this short list caught your editor’s eye. Let’s start with a downpayment of five books from 2017’s archive, followed by the balance next week. Happy reading!

? By Edward O. Thorp

Summary via publisher (Random House)

The incredible true story of the card-counting mathematics professor who taught the world how to beat the dealer and, as the first of the great quantitative investors, ushered in a revolution on Wall Street. A child of the Great Depression, legendary mathematician Edward O. Thorp invented card counting, proving the seemingly impossible: that you could beat the dealer at the blackjack table. As a result he launched a gambling renaissance. His remarkable success—and mathematically unassailable method—caused such an uproar that casinos altered the rules of the game to thwart him and the legions he inspired.

? By Tyler Cowen

Q&A with author via NPR

In a new book, The Complacent Class, economist Tyler Cowen argues that the United States is standing still. People have grown more risk averse and are reluctant to switch jobs or move to another state, he says, and the desire to innovate — to grow and change — has gone away. In an interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin, Cowen says he’s worried that more and more communities are self-segregating — by income, education or race.

? By Andrew W. Lo

Summary via publisher (Princeton University Press)

Half of all Americans have money in the stock market, yet economists can’t agree on whether investors and markets are rational and efficient, as modern financial theory assumes, or irrational and inefficient, as behavioral economists believe—and as financial bubbles, crashes, and crises suggest. This is one of the biggest debates in economics and the value or futility of investment management and financial regulation hang on the outcome. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew Lo cuts through this debate with a new framework, the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis, in which rationality and irrationality coexist.