The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It, by David Weil Virginia Doellgast finds workers pay dearly when big firms devolve oversight of pay and conditions 6 March
Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit, by Charles Calomiris and Stephen Haber When the lending system isn’t working, interests rate a check, advises Howard Davies 20 February
All That Is Solid: The Great Housing Disaster, by Danny Dorling Our use of housing as an asset to be traded is a collective failure that is preserving inequality, finds Tim Hall 20 February
The Watchdog That Didn’t Bark: The Financial Crisis and the Disappearance of Investigative Journalism, by Dean Starkman A demonstration of the need for modern muckrakers also celebrates the best work journalism can do, finds Tim Luckhurst 13 February
I Spend, Therefore I Am: The True Cost of Economics, by Philip Roscoe Michelle Baddeley on an exploration of what makes us tick 13 February
Coming Up Short: Working-class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty, by Jennifer M. Silva Angelia Wilson hopes for a turn against therapy and towards political engagement in the US 9 January
The Curve: From Freeloaders into Superfans: The Future of Business, by Nicholas Lovell Finola Kerrigan is not convinced by a proposed new way of doing business 2 January
Down to the Sea in Ships: Of Ageless Oceans and Modern Men, by Horatio Clare Philip Hoare on the global market’s manifest destiny 2 January
Reporting Disasters: Famine, Aid, Politics and the Media, by Suzanne Franks Sally Feldman on an alternative interpretation of the media reporting and government responses to the Ethiopian famine in 1984 14 November
The Endtimes of Human Rights, by Stephen Hopgood Conor Gearty on an impassioned attack on ‘imperialism disguised as moralism’ 14 November
The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, by Angus Deaton Kitty Stewart finds wisdom in a study of progress and disparity between nations and people 31 October
Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as if Women Mattered, by Cynthia Enloe Gwendolyn Beetham on what we can learn from observations of society’s dismissal of women 17 October
Working Lives: Gender, Migration and Employment in Britain, 1945- 2007, by Linda McDowell Pat Thane on a book that provides important insights into the experience of female immigrants 10 October
Ain’t No Trust: How Bosses, Boyfriends and Bureaucrats Fail Low-Income Mothers and Why it Matters, by Judith A. Levine Angelia R. Wilson on welfare, women and unresolved political tension 3 October
Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir Victoria Bateman counts the costs when there’s not enough to go around 12 September
The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu Kitty Stewart on how belt-tightening means life-shortening for some 22 August
Making Capitalism Fit For Society, by Colin Crouch Chris Pierson considers a pitch for ‘assertive social democracy’ in an age dominated by neoliberalism 22 August
Crash and Beyond: Causes and Consequences of the Global Financial Crisis, by Andrew Farlow Victoria Bateman on the parallels and differences between 1929 and 2008 15 August
A World without Wall Street?, by François Morin, translated by Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Michael Richardson Howard Davies finds the mooted global monetary solutions unrealistic and the translation astoundingly sloppy 1 August
Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora by Neha Vora Caroline Osella considers a slice of the subcontinent at the heart of the Gulf 11 July
Broke: Who Killed the Middle Classes? by David Boyle Stewart Lansley on claims that the bourgeois advance is stuck in reverse 11 July
China Goes Global: The Partial Power by David Shambaugh A neat model for the nascent superpower is proving elusive, says Kerry Brown 4 July
Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste by Philip Mirowski A powerful critique of neoclassical economics raises profound questions for all, says Christopher Phelps 4 July
Happy Money: The New Science of Smarter Spending by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton Steven Schwartz considers some sound investment decisions 20 June
China’s Growth: The Making of an Economic Superpower by Linda Yueh Yongjin Zhang on the riddle at the heart of an Eastern paradox 13 June
The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South by Vijay Prashad Stefan Andreasson on an engaging but unbalanced view of a vital subject 13 June
The Democracy Project by David Graeber Rationality yields to sentimentality in an Occupy Wall Street-inspired call for direct action, Fred Inglis finds 6 June
Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman by Jeremy Adelman Andreas Hess discusses the incredible life of an artist of ‘possibilism’ 14 March
Unfree Masters: Recording Artists and the Politics of Work by Matt Stahl Hillegonda Rietveld reviews a study of recording artists as cultural workers 7 February
Bleakonomics by Rob Larson Stewart Lansley on a sobering tale of plutonomy and the ‘failed science’ of economics 31 January
Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease Alison Bashford applauds a magisterial study of scarily relevant bioeconomic history 1 November
We're all citizens of Muddleton Michelle Baddeley discovers our Yucki instincts and Endian tendencies 4 September
Easy answers and the American way An airport classic overloaded with acronyms, but as Leslie Gofton concedes, what's not to like? 4 September
