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My former colleague and mentor, Prof. David Boyce, loved Vaclav Smil's ([3]) I How the World Really Works i . Here is Smil's thesis in a nutshell: Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat, or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technical advances. To be sure, Smil is no climate change denier. [Extracted from the article]

The book "Economies, Institutions and Territories: Dissecting Nexuses in a Changing World" explores the complex relationship between economies, institutions, and territories. It argues that these components are constantly changing and influencing each other, with post-industrial economies and environmental factors adding to the complexity. The book addresses various issues such as the embedding of economic processes at the local level, the stress on boundaries between state and market, and the emergence of new elites. It is divided into four sections and contains case studies from around the world. While the book does not address the impacts of digital capitalism, it offers valuable insights for future studies in economics, economic geography, and economic sociology. [Extracted from the article]

The book "Land: How the hunger for ownership shaped the modern world" by Winchester explores the history and consequences of land ownership. It emphasizes that land is not an immutable entity and can be shaped by both nature and human intervention. The book provides examples such as land reclamation in the Netherlands and the impact of climate change on land. It also delves into the conflicts that have arisen from land ownership, including border disputes and territorial conquests. The author argues that land ownership is a human construct and discusses the relative and absolute aspects of owning land. The book highlights the constructive and destructive aspects of land ownership and its impact on society and the environment. [Extracted from the article]

As Anthony W. Orlando claims in his book, "Where we live isn't just a building and a plot of land. The concentration of Black families in inner cities and the flight of White families to the suburbs had important effects not only on the quality of housing in Black neighbourhoods but also on the opportunities their residents faced. Given that banks gave the loans to the safest homebuyers, other institutional lenders emerged: building and loan associations. [Extracted from the article]

Chapter 10, "Addressing Unevenness" is the most attractive part here: it connects behavioural theory to (regional) economic development, transformation, and well-being. Chapter 8 is the crowning achievement to which the two preceding chapter built up: they provided an analysis how "culture and personality can be measured and examined as a process of co-evolution" (p. 191), and chapter 8 links the resulting "human agency potential" to entrepreneurship and innovation. Although these chapters read like earlier papers or reports that have now been integrated into the book, they still provide valuable inpiration for how the connection from agents to regions actually can work. [Extracted from the article]

The book represents an ideal follow up to Edward Glaeser's (2011) I The triumph of the city i , where an optimistic view about the way urbanites currently benefit from living in cities was presented and documented. For each of those future strategies and policy options, Glaeser and Cutler provide guidelines based on their reading of the present crisis, in the light of their prior applied studies dealing with urban life from an urban and health economics perspective. Nevertheless, a sound policy reaction must be designed, lest funding for local policies substantially shrinks and the urban policies suggested in Glaeser and Cutler's book are literally choked. [Extracted from the article]

Reviews several books. 'Local and Regional Economic Development: Renegotiating Power Under Labour,' by R.J. Bennett and D. Payne; 'International Migration Into the 21st Century, Essays in Honour of Reginald Appleyard,' edited by M.A.B. Siddique; 'Economic Structure and Maturity: Collected Papers in Input-Output Modelling and Applications,' by Ranko Bon; 'Regional Planning and Development in Europe,' edited by David Shaw, Peter Roberts and James Walsh.

It led to housing advocates such as Catherine Bauer voicing their opinion about housing as 'a fundamental right to which every citizen is entitled, the provision of which becomes a responsibility of government' (p. 119). The first part (chapter 1) contains the discussion of important concepts such as "housing justice" and the "materials" of justice on which a theory of justice is built and that distinguish one theory from another. In his beautifully crafted book, Casey J. Dawkins deals with the issue of "housing justice", a very topical issue in times of severe problems of housing affordability and homelessness in the United States and in much of the rest of the developed world. [Extracted from the article]

Princeton University Press has published recently, along with the book revised here, some authored books which focus on contemporary socio-economic issues, with the scope to build a fairer, wealthier, and better society: I What we owe each other: A new social contract for a better society i ([5]), by Minouche Shafik; I The inglorious years: The collapse of the industrial order and the rise of digital society i ([2]), by Daniel Cohen; and I The republic of beliefs: A new approach to law and economic i s ([1]), by Kaushik Basu. The titles of the chapters are also very suggestive, and reflect their content: for example, chapter 4, "Half a century of policy mistakes", chapter 5, "Scapegoating Globalisation", chapter 10, "A tax policy for the left behind", and also for the rest of the chapters. The book begins with an interesting preface that describes the impact of the pandemic on society, by intensifying many of the inequalities described in this book. [Extracted from the article]

Invisible China: How the urban-rural divide threatens China's rise Second, on several occasions, the authors say things like "the entire world will be much better off with a thriving China" (p. 154) and "a growing, thriving China is good for the world" (p. 178). This status is very difficult to change, it detrimentally affects citizens with rural I hukou i status, and, most importantly, one's I hukou i status affects virtually every aspect of one's life. [Extracted from the article]

Added in recent years have been the books published from the book series "Perspectives on geographical marginality", published since 2016 at the initiative of the mentioned commission. As with most edited books, this one also shows discontinuities, but this is understandable due to the geographical diversity from which the case studies come and the diversity of local responses to marginalization and peripheralization. Although the European Commission does not use the term "marginalization" but other similar terms, a source of inspiration for the book was that the European Commission argues that social innovation is a key strategy for achieving an inclusive and sustainable social market economy. [Extracted from the article]

The article reviews the book "Social Capital in the Knowledge Economy: Theory and Empirics," by Hans Westlund.

The book I Cultural heritage, creativity and economic development i by Silvia Cerisola proposes a territorial approach to study the relationship between cultural heritage and economic development. Chapter 1 introduces the conceptual framework of the book, discusses the research questions and defines the unit of the analysis. Chapter 3 emphasizes the idea that cultural heritage may have an indirect impact on economic development that is related to the concept of creativity. [Extracted from the article]

The article reviews the book "Transport Developments and Innovations in an Evolving World," edited by M. Beuthe, V. Himanen, A. Reggiani and L. Zamparini.

Reviews the book "Challenged Borderlands: Transcending Political and Cultural Boundaries," by Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi, Barbara J. Morehouse and Doris Wastl-Walter.

Reviews several books on regional science. "Mathematical Location and Land Use Theory: An Introduction," 2nd ed., by Tönu Puu; "European Regional Growth," edited by Bernard Fingleton; "New Forms of Urbanization: Beyond the Urban-Rural Dichotomy," edited by Tony Champion and Graeme Hugo; "Spatial Interaction Modelling: A Regional Science Context," by John R. Roy.

Reviews several books on social sciences. "Social Change and Sustainable Transport," edited by William R. Black and Peter Nijkamp; "Asia Meets Europe: Inter-Regionalism and the Asia-Europe Meeting," by Julie Gilson; "Culture, Institutions and Economic Development. A Study of Eight European Regions," by Michael Keating, John Loughlin and Kris Deschouwer.

Reviews several books on economics and regional science. "The Information Economy and American Cities," by Matthew P. Drennan; "Transportation Networks and the Optimal Location of Human Activities: A Numerical Geography Approach," by Isabelle Thomas; "Travel Behaviour: Spacial Patterns, Congestion and Modelling," edited by E. Stern, I. Solomon and P.H.I. Bovy.

Reviews several books about environmental sciences. "Environmental Regulation in a Federal System: Framing Environmental Policy in the European Union," by Tim Jeppesen; "Innovation and the Growth of Cities," by Zoltan J. Acs; "International Finance and Open-Economy Macro-Economics," by Giancarlo Gandolfo; "Sports and City Marketing in European Cities," by Leo van den Berg.

Reviews several books. 'Urban and Regional Economics,' by Philip McCann; 'New Analytical Advances in Transportation and Spatial Dynamics,' edited by Massimo Gastaldi and Aura Reggiani; 'Intelligent Transport Systems,' edited by Roger R. Stough; 'International Urban Planning Settings: Lessons of Success,' edited by Jack F. Williams and Robert J. Stimson.

Reviews several non-fiction books. 'Promoting Local Growth: Process, Practice and Policy,' edited by Daniel Felsenstein and Michael Taylor; 'Governance, Institutional Change and Regional Development,' edited by M. Danson, H. Halkier and G. Cameron; 'Institutions and Systems in the Geography of Innovation,' edited by M.P. Feldman and N. Massard.

Reviews several books. 'Analytical Transport Economies: An International Perspective,' edited by Jacob B. Polak and Arnold Heertje; 'Creating the New Economy: The Entrepreneur and the US Resurgence,' by B.D. Norton; 'Globalization and Marginality in Geographical Space: Political, Economic and Social Issues of Development in the New Millenium,' edited by Heikki Jussila; Roser Majoral and Fernanda Delgado-Cravidao.

Reviews several books related to economics. 'Borders, Regions, and People,' edited by Martin van der Velde and Henk van Houtum; 'Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy,' edited by Allen J. Scott; 'Frontiers of Environmental Economics,' edited by H. Folmer, H.L. Gael, S. Gerking and A. Rose.

Reviews three books. 'Knowledge, Innovation and Economic Growth. The Theory and Practice of Learning Regions,' edited by Frans Boekema, Kevin Morgan, Silvia Bakkers and Roel Rutten; 'High-Technology Clusters, Networking and Collective Learning in Europe,' edited by David Keeble and Frank Wilkinson; 'Globalizing Cities: A New Spatial Order?,' edited by Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kempen.

Reviews three books concerning political science and related subjects. 'Spatial Economic Science: New Frontiers in Theory and Methodology,' edited by Aura Reggiani; 'Invention and the Rise of Technocapitalism,' by Luis Suarez-Villa; 'Regional Economic Change in Russia,' edited by P. Hanson and M. Bradshaw.

Reviews three books. `Travel Demand Management and Public Policy,' by Erik Ferguson; `Self-Organization and the City,' by Juval Portugali; `Growth, Employment and Migration in Southeast Asia: Structural Change in the Greater Mekong Countries,' by Prema-chandra Athukoral, Chris Manning and Piyasiri Wickramasekara.

Reviews several books on economics. `Globalization and Integrated Area Development in European Cities,' edited by F. Moulaert; `Social Security and Solidarity in the European Union: Facts, Evaluations and Perspectives,' edited by Joos P. A. van Vugt and Jan M. Peet; `Regional Inequality and Structural Changes: Lessons from the Brazilian Experience,' by Eduardo A. Haddad.

Reviews several books on regional science. `Ethnicity and Housing: Accommodating Differences,' edited by Frederick W. Boal; `Valuing the Built Environment: GIS and House Price Analysis,' by Scott Orford; `Understanding and Interpreting Economic Structure,' edited by G. J. D. Hewings, M. Sonis, M. Madden and Y. Kimura.

Reviews two books about community development. `Systems of Housing Supply and Housing Production in Europe,' by A. Golland; `Innovation, Networks and Localities,' edited by M.M. Fischer, L. Suarez-Villa and M. Steiner.

Reviews three books on community development. `Institutions and Regional Labour Markets in Europe,' by L. van der Laan and S.M. Ruesga; `The European High-Speed Train and Urban Development: Experiences in Fourteen European Urban Regions,' by L. van der Berg and P. Pol; `European Cities in Competition,' by C. Jensen-Butler, A. Schachar and J. van Weesep.

Reviews several books. `Recent Developments in Spatial Analysis. Spatial Statistics, Behavioural Modelling, and Computational Intelligence,' by Manfred M. Fischer and Arthur Getis; `Regional and Local Potential for Transformation in Poland,' by G. Gorzelak; `The City and Its Sciences,' edited by C.S. Bertuglia, G. Bianchi and A. Mela.