The Wall Street Journal asked people of some prominence to name the best books they read in 2020. So I asked my colleagues. Honestly, I like this list better. Of course, we all recommend the books Cato published this year. But we read more widely, and here are some of our favorites:
The Little House By Virginia Lee Burton — This children’s story tracks our heroine—a well-built, 19th-century country home enjoying the stars at night and the changing seasons—as modern urban life creeps closer, surrounds her, and takes her land, her enjoyment of nature, and everything else. After skyscrapers have expropriated every inch of her once-peaceful hillside, a family finds the little pink house “sad and lonely” and, in contempt of modern permitting and historical preservation laws, manages to quickly load her onto a truck and return with her to the countryside. Perfect for ages 1–9.
–David Bier, immigration policy analyst
Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis MD PhD (a recent McLaughlin Lecturer at Cato). A very timely overview of the pandemic, touching on a whole host of aspects of the crisis (though not much economics).
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, by Joseph Henrich. A very provocative thesis that suggests that church-pressured social changes in who it was acceptable to marry (not cousins) and then Protestant churches emphasizing individual interpretation and reading provided the foundations for the psychology that allowed individual rights, democracy, markets, and innovation to flourish.
–Ryan Bourne, R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety; by Eric Schlosser (Penguin, 2013). Investigative reporter Eric Schlosser explores the harrowing history of fatal mishaps and near-catastrophes in America’s nuclear arsenal, culminating in the explosion of a fully armed Titan ICBM in its silo in Damascus, Arkansas in 1980. Widely heralded upon its publication in 2013, Command and Control was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was the source material for an Oscar-shortlisted PBS documentary of the same name. With a mix of dark humor and painstaking attention to detail, Schlosser explains how the appearance of safety and security surrounding nuclear weapons was always more illusion than fact. The book follows nuclear weapons designers and engineers as they sought to raise the alarm and adopt more stringent safety features from the Manhattan Project to the modern era. It explains how on several occasions America came perilously close to suffering an accidental nuclear detonation, often avoided only by dumb luck. The risk is still real today, and Command and Control offers a compelling libertarian lesson on the fallibility of human institutions and the dangers of assuming government competence.
–Andy Craig, staff writer
I read Animal Farm to the kids. It surprised me how relevant it remains. Now every time someone defends ObamaCare, I hear Squealer: “Surely, comrades, you don’t want discrimination against preexisting conditions back?”
–Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies