Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2021 -

What causes financial bubbles? Quinn and Turner (both, Queen's University Belfast) argue that four things are necessary: "marketability" (the ease with which assets can be freely bought and sold, the "oxygen" of bubbles); money and credit (especially low interest rates and loose credit conditions, the "fuel" of bubbles); speculation (buying with the sole motivation of generating capital gains, especially by novices, analogous to "heat"); and a technological or political "spark" to ignite the combustible mix. They use this framework to great effect, illuminating the causes and consequences of eleven historical bubbles. These include the Mississippi and South Seas bubbles that arose in London and Paris (1720); Latin American investments in the 1820s; Britain's railway investment bubble in the mid-1840s; Australia's land "boom and bust" as seen in the late 1800s; Britain's bicycle mania of the 1890s; the Wall Street boom and crash of the 1920s; Japan's stock market and land bubble of the 1980s; the dot-com bubble; the subprime bubble that burst in 2008; and China's recent stock market bubbles. The authors conclude that bubbles of a political cast are the most destructive, especially when fueled by bank leverage. This wonderful book is interesting, informative, and insightful.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Economist and data scientist Whitby offers a well-written treatise on the evolution and impact of census-taking. While this is Dr. Whitby's first book, his international experience working as a data scientist for the World Bank complements the thorough historical research and animated writing brought to bear here. Vignettes throughout detail the development and ultimate impact of censuses across time and space, relating them to national conflicts, democracy, citizenship, nationality, ethnicity, and race. While generally a champion of census-taking, Whitby also provides unflinching details on how some censuses have enabled moral failings, weaponized numbers, and played into problematic political arithmetic. This book underscores the need for data ethics, particularly when paired with such works as Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction (2016). Placing current US census debates in international and historical context and theorizing about how the modern information landscape may lead to significant change, this will be an exceptionally valuable read for any student of data analytics, public affairs, or history. Written in the first person, the book will also be a welcome resource for the lay reader, enjoyable to read yet evidencing rigorous scholarly research.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.