MixedThe New York Times Book Review\"Abrahamian’s interviews with the people — the vast majority of them men — who helped develop and run these special economic zones provide a window into how just a few economists and consultants could change the way countries around the world operate. But her accounts of the conversations can be meandering, and sometimes divert her from a focus on the final product: the unusual jurisdictions her book seeks to illuminate ... Finding solace in a place without borders makes for a nice conclusion, but it skips over the question of what to do about the rest of the world — the hidden globe of Abrahamian’s title. The answer might require another book.\
Daniel Susskind
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewSusskind declares that machines are getting so smart that they’ll soon replace humans at a growing list of jobs, potentially including doctors, bricklayers and insurance adjusters ... Without some sort of intervention, he says, the inequality inherent in today’s economy will metastasize into an even greater divide between the haves and have-nots. This argument flies against the face of much modern economic thought ... the book should be required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future. That’s because Susskind also turns to one of the biggest consequences of technological change — inequality — and what can be done about it. \'Today’s inequalities are the birth pangs of tomorrow’s technological unemployment,\' Susskind writes, and he has a point ... Even if Susskind’s prediction is wrong — that machines will soon render many humans irrelevant in the labor market — his book provides a useful exercise in planning for a more unequal future.
David Graeber
MixedThe New York Times Book Review\"Graeber is not an economist; he is an anthropologist who has done fieldwork in highland Madagascar and cops to being an anarchist who wants to see governments and corporations have less power. Yet his argument cries out for stronger economic evidence. Especially since an economist would find a number of flaws in it ... That’s not to say that Graeber’s argument is not without merit — in my own unscientific research, I encountered a few friends who said that their jobs fit his description perfectly. And Graeber’s anthropological eye and skepticism about capitalism are useful in questioning some parts of the economy that the West has come to accept as normal ... If nothing else, this book asks readers whether there might be a better way to organize the world of work. That’s a question worth asking.\
Elizabeth Strout
PanThe Los Angeles TimesThe Burgess Boys shares milestones with Strout's previous book — people have affairs and get divorced and get together and miss their children — but the events feel heavier here, perhaps because they involve a trial and questions about prejudice. And the characters seem ill-equipped to deal with these events … Some of the most compelling parts of The Burgess Boys aren't about the Burgesses at all but about people in the town. This may be unnerving for readers focused on the title characters, but it's a reminder of where Strout is strong … But in The Burgess Boys, as she writes of Jim and Bob, Somalians and Mainers, law firms and marriages, Strout isn't able to pull the disparate pieces together. Somehow, in writing a novel, Strout has lost the story.
