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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]

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]