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Summer Reads

It’s that time of the year again. The sun is shining. Water is beckoning you to jump in. And, most relevant for us, books have a special allure to read. Which is why Planet Money is back with some summer book recommendations.

Iroz Gaizka/AFP via Getty Images

Planet Money co-host Nick Fountain recommends Dark Wire by Joseph Cox: “It’s a riveting book. Joseph went and found the law enforcement officials behind the biggest sting operation in history. The FBI set up a smartphone company. They convinced criminals to buy the phones. And then they used these phones to snoop on them. The book inspired my recent Planet Money episode, 'How the FBI's fake cell phone company put criminals into real jail cells.' But there’s so much that didn’t make it into the show. Joseph talked with the CEOs of rival encrypted smartphone companies, and countless bonafide criminals. It reads like a movie, but it’s real.”

Planet Money producer Emma Peaslee recommends Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum and translated by Shanna Tan. “Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is about a woman in South Korea who suffers from career burnout and leaves her corporate life behind to open a bookshop. As she tries to create a new, chiller relationship with her work life — she also has to balance the struggles of being a small business owner and keeping the bookstore afloat. Throughout the book, there is an undercurrent of malaise about the South Korean economy. Many young people are struggling to find work despite reaching high levels of education. The bookshop becomes a rich setting for a charming cast of characters, who are each redefining their relationship with work."

Planet Money head honcho Alex Goldmark recommends Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves by Nicola Twilley. “It’s a fascinating look at how refrigeration shapes different facets of society, including our economy. Going back to the earliest days of the ‘cold chain’ when ice was harvested from New England lakes and packed into rail cars, refrigeration shrunk the world and drove industries to scale, especially meat. It was refrigeration that enabled centralized stockyards and massive slaughterhouses, which largely did away with the local butcher as a skilled trade and viable business. Later in the book, Nicola Twilley visits Rwanda and show us the big dilemma: unless we make considerable breakthroughs, spreading refrigeration to poorer countries would have incredible health benefits for billions of people — but would also be catastrophic for the climate. There’s a desperate need to find new ways to cool our food.”

Emily Siner, a guest editor, recommends The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue. “This book is the perfect summertime read — Irish contemporary fiction about millennials navigating relationships and belonging. (Think Sally Rooney, but with slightly less angst.) It’s told against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis, which hit Ireland especially hard. And it illuminates the ongoing psychological toll that the recession took on people coming of age during a period of intense economic uncertainty.”

Alex Mayyasi, the author of the forthcoming Planet Money book, recommends The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 by Richard Zacks. Alex describes it as a book that is just screaming to be made into a movie. It has an intriguing main character, a gripping plot, and great historical details, like the U.S. navy delivering "tribute" to pirates, including perfume for their beards. Alex and Nick Fountain interviewed the author for a recent Planet Money episode on the Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea. The book shines a spotlight on a fascinating and forgotten chapter of American history that will also help you understand the growth of global trade.

Planet Money producer Willa Rubin recommends Germany 1923: Hyperinflation, Hitler's Putsch, and Democracy in Crisis by German author Volker Ullrich. “You know the classic image of hyperinflation — of wheelbarrows full of Reichsmarks? That was in 1923,” Rubin says. “The book, which was translated beautifully by Jefferson Chase from its original German, explains what caused that hyperinflation, and how it affected Germany’s political and social life.”

Planet Money Summer School producer Audrey Dilling recommends What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence And Choice by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman. “I wouldn’t normally clamor to read a book about the decision to have children, mostly because I already have them and don’t have much time to read, but I heard the authors on a podcast recently and I was struck by their willingness to make space for complexity and ambiguity around such a big decision,” Audrey says. “The book seems to engage with and acknowledge the big societal forces influencing this decision without attempting to tie falling birthrates to one cause in a Big Argument. Instead they suggest that people are more complicated than that, and maybe not even always rational. The reason I still might read this book even though I already have kids is for the discussions about how to think about raising children in the context of a changing climate.”

Didn't find the book for you here? Stay tuned to The Indicator for an upcoming episode that will recommend books that help us understand how the economy works.

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Planet Money - Summer Reads 2024

Summer Reads

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