The depth of Hoover’s scholarship is reflected in the numerous books published by our fellows on a broad variety of topics and issues. This timely and prodigious output offers insights on the most pressing issues in public policy. The books they published this year range in topics from inflation and concepts of social justice to semiconductor security and the life and legacy of Milton Friedman.
Please check out this selection of books published by Hoover scholars in 2023.
The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level
By John H. Cochrane via Princeton University Press
January 17, 2023
Where do inflation and deflation ultimately come from? The fiscal theory of the price level offers a simple answer: prices adjust so that the real value of government debt equals the present value of taxes, less spending. Inflation breaks out when people don’t expect the government to fully repay its debts. John Cochrane aims to make fiscal theory useful as a conceptual framework and modeling tool, while analyzing history and policy. Further, he offers fresh insights and extensive rethinking of monetary doctrines and institutions as well as the era of zero interest rates and post-pandemic inflation.
Social Justice Fallacies
By Thomas Sowell via Basic Books
September 19, 2023
The quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time, with an appeal to many different people, for many different reasons. But those who use the same words do not always present the same meanings. Clarifying those meanings is the first step toward finding out what we agree on and disagree on. From there, it is largely a question of what the facts are. Social Justice Fallacies reveals how many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed.
Silicon Triangle: The United States, Taiwan, China, and Global Semiconductor Security
Edited by Larry Diamond, Admiral James O. Ellis Jr., and Orville Schell via Hoover Institution Press
October 1, 2023
The United States, Taiwan, and China are bound within a “silicon triangle.” Semiconductors link our geopolitics, our ongoing economic prosperity, and our technological competitiveness. This book draws on the deliberations of a multidisciplinary Hoover Institution–Asia Society working group of technologists, economists, military strategists, industry players, and regional policy experts to contemplate the dynamic global supply chain in semiconductors—one in which US industry faces growing vulnerabilities, China aggressively promotes homegrown semiconductor mastery, and Taiwan finds itself with a crucial monopoly on high-end logic chips sought by buyers globally.
Homelands: A Personal History of Europe
By Timothy Garton Ash via Yale University Press
May 23, 2023
Timothy Garton Ash, Europe’s “historian of the present,” has been “breathing Europe” for the last half century. In Homelands he embarks on a journey in time and space around the postwar continent, drawing on his own notes from many great events, giving vivid firsthand accounts of its leading actors, revisiting the places where its history was made, and recalling its triumphs and tragedies through their imprint on the present.
The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives
By Josiah Ober and Brook Manville via Princeton University Press
September 19, 2023
Is democracy in trouble, perhaps even dying? Pundits say so, and polls show that most Americans believe that their country’s system of governance is being “tested” or is “under attack.” But is the future of democracy necessarily so dire? In The Civic Bargain, Brook Manville and Josiah Ober push back against the prevailing pessimism about the fate of democracy around the world. Instead of an epitaph for democracy, they offer a guide for democratic renewal, calling on citizens to recommit to a “civic bargain” with one another to guarantee civic rights of freedom, equality, and dignity. That bargain also requires them to fulfill the duties of democratic citizenship: governing themselves with no “boss” except one another, embracing compromise, treating each other as civic friends, and investing in civic education for each rising generation.
Wahhābism: The History of a Militant Islamic Movement
By: Cole Bunzel via Princeton University Press
May 16, 2023
In the mid-eighteenth century, a controversial Islamic movement arose in the central Arabian region of Najd that forever changed the political landscape of the Arabian Peninsula and the history of Islamic thought. Its founder, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, taught that most professed Muslims were polytheists due to their veneration of Islamic saints at tombs and gravesites. He preached that true Muslims, those who worship God alone, must show hatred and enmity toward these polytheists and fight them in jihād. Drawing on a wealth of primary resource materials, Cole Bunzel tells the story of Wahhābism from its emergence in the 1740s to its taming and co-option by the modern Saudi state in the 1920s and shows how its legacy endures in the ideologies of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Bread + Medicine: American Famine Relief in Soviet Russia, 1921–1923
By Bertrand M. Patenaude and Joan Nabseth Stevenson via Hoover Institution Press
June 1, 2023
A century ago, the Soviet Union faced a catastrophic famine, brought on by the disruptions of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Russian Civil War; draconian Soviet economic policies; and a severe drought. American relief helped millions survive the famine of 1921–23. While the role of food aid has been well documented, Bread + Medicine focuses on the lesser-known story of America’s medical intervention, including a large-scale vaccination drive, and treatment of famine-related diseases (such as cholera, typhoid, and typhus) and hunger-related deficiency diseases, especially among children. The American Relief Administration’s medical relief program proved essential to the overall success of its mission. Bread + Medicine, richly illustrated with photographs, posters, and documents from the Hoover Library & Archives, tells that story in vivid detail.
Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative
By Jennifer Burns via Farrar, Straus and Giroux
November 14, 2023
Milton Friedman was, alongside John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the twentieth century. His work was instrumental in the turn toward free markets that defined the 1980s, and his full-throated defenses of capitalism and freedom resonated with audiences around the world. In Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative, the first full biography to employ archival sources, the historian Jennifer Burns tells Friedman’s extraordinary story with the nuance it deserves. She traces Friedman’s longstanding collaborations with women, including the economist Anna Schwartz, as well as his complex relationships with powerful figures such as Fed chair Arthur Burns and Treasury secretary George Shultz, and his direct interventions in policymaking at the highest levels. Most of all, Burns explores Friedman’s key role in creating a new economic vision and a modern American conservatism.
Defense Budgeting for a Safer World: The Experts Speak
Edited by Michael J. Boskin, John Rader, and Kiran Sridhar via Hoover Institution Press
November 1, 2023
America is facing the most dangerous and complex geopolitical environment since World War II. Ensuring the adequacy and flexibility of our defense budget is essential to keeping our nation secure and the world safe for global democracy. Defense Budgeting for a Safer World brings together the ideas, perspectives, and solutions of America’s most renowned experts on national security and the defense budget. The volume originates from a conference held at the Hoover Institution in early 2023 and reflects the presentations, discussions, and debates among military and civilian leaders. Drawing on their remarkable experiences leading the Pentagon, the military services, Congress, and academe, these experts lay out the key priorities in reforming, realigning, and rightsizing the budget amid current challenges.
How Monetary Policy Got Behind the Curve—and How to Get Back
Edited by Michael D. Bordo, John H. Cochrane, and John B. Taylor via Hoover Institution Press
March 1, 2023
With the inflation rate in the United States and many other countries on the rise for over a year and nearing double digits, the Hoover Institution hosted its 2022 conference on monetary policy. Policymakers, market participants, and academic researchers gathered to discuss the situation. Many agreed that low interest rates and high money growth were inappropriate given the high inflation rate and evidence that the United States has recovered from the deep recession induced by the pandemic and its policy response in 2020. The thoughtful papers and the thorough discussions in this volume of conference proceedings illustrate the debate about the reasons for this mismatch, as well as how to get back on track.
Agreeing to Disagree: How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience
By Michael W. McConnell and Nathan S. Chapman via Oxford University Press
June 27, 2023
In Agreeing to Disagree, Nathan S. Chapman and Michael W. McConnell detail the theological, political, and philosophical underpinnings of the Establishment Clause, state disestablishment, and the disestablishment norms applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. Americans in the early republic were intimately acquainted with the laws used in England, the colonies, and early states to enforce religious uniformity. The Establishment Clause was understood to prohibit the government from incentivizing such uniformity. Chapman and McConnell show how the US Supreme Court has largely implemented these purposes in cases addressing prayer in schools, state funding of religious schools, religious symbols on public property, and limits on religious accommodations.
Who Governs? Emergency Powers in the Time of COVID
Edited by Morris P. Fiorina via Hoover Institution Press
February 1, 2023
In a democracy, the legitimacy of authority derives from the consent of the governed. Constitutions or long-standing norms typically impose constraints on government authority, but under extraordinary circumstances—emergencies—normal and procedural standards can be overridden or suspended. Such was the case when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in the spring of 2020. This book describes the emergency powers that existed in the American states at the start of the pandemic; shows how such powers were implemented; examines how courts, legislatures, and public opinion responded to the use of emergency powers; and considers the resulting tensions they exert on democratic governance.
Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report
By Philip Zelikow and the Covid Crisis Group via PublicAffairs
April 25, 2023
Our national leaders have drifted into treating the pandemic as though it were an unavoidable natural catastrophe, repeating a depressing cycle of panic followed by neglect. So a remarkable group of practitioners and scholars from many backgrounds came together determined to discover and learn lessons from this latest world war. Lessons from the Covid War is plainspoken and clear-sighted. It cuts through the enormous jumble of information to make some sense of it all and answer: What just happened to us, and why? And, crucially, how could we do better next time?
Accountability Reconsidered: Voters, Interests, and Information in US Policymaking
Edited by Brandice Canes-Wrone, Charles M. Cameron, Sanford C. Gordon, and Gregory A. Huber via Cambridge University Press
February 16, 2023
The last two decades have witnessed a substantial change in the media environment, growing polarization of the two dominant parties, and increasing inequality of wealth and income. These profound changes necessitate updating our understanding of political accountability. Accountability Reconsidered examines how political accountability functions in the United States today given the dramatic changes in voting behavior, media, congressional dynamics, and relations between branches. With particular attention to policymaking, this volume uses original research to analyze micro-foundations of voter behavior, examining its implications for incentives and offering insight into the accountability relationships among voters, interest groups, legislators, and government bureaucracy.
Cage Fight: Civilian and Democratic Pressures on Military Conflicts and Foreign Policy
Edited by Bruce S. Thornton via Hoover Institution Press
February 1, 2023
From ancient Athens to modern Washington, DC, the demands of democracy have often come into conflict with the conditions of military execution. What happens when civilian or military dissent interferes with an administration’s leadership? Or when the right to elect new leaders in the middle of a conflict interrupts a long-term military or policy strategy? Several experts on military history examine these questions and more.
Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine
By Andrew Roberts and Gen. David Petraeus via Harper
October 17, 2023
In this deep and incisive study, Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director who commanded the US-led coalitions in both Iraq, during the Surge, and Afghanistan, joins prize-winning historian Andrew Roberts to explore over seventy years of conflict, drawing significant lessons and insights from their fresh analysis of the past. Drawing on their different perspectives and areas of expertise, Petraeus and Roberts show how often critical mistakes have been repeated time and again, and the challenge, for statesmen and generals alike, of learning to adapt to various new weapon systems, theories, and strategies.
This Is Not Who We Are: America’s Struggle Between Vengeance and Virtue
By Zachary Shore via Cambridge University Press
January 19, 2023
What kind of country is America? Zachary Shore tackles this polarizing question by spotlighting some of the most morally muddled matters of WWII. Should Japanese Americans be moved from the West Coast to prevent sabotage? Should the German people be made to starve as punishment for launching the war? Should America drop atomic bombs to break Japan's will to fight? Surprisingly, despite wartime anger, most Americans and key officials favored mercy over revenge. Yet, a minority managed to push through their punitive policies. After the war, by feeding the hungry, rebuilding Western Europe and Japan, and airlifting supplies to a blockaded Berlin, America strove to restore the country's humanity, transforming its image in the eyes of the world.
Equality of Opportunity: A Century of Debate
By David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd via Hoover Institution Press
June 15, 2023
For over one hundred years, Americans have debated what equality of opportunity means and the role of government in ensuring it. Are we born with equality of opportunity, and must we thus preserve our innate legal and political freedoms? Or must it be created through laws and policies that smooth out social or economic inequalities? David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd trace the debate as it has evolved from America’s founding into the twentieth century, when the question took on greater prominence. The authors use original sources and historical reinterpretations to revisit great debates and their implications for the discussions today.
Best Things First: The 12 Most Efficient Solutions for the World’s Poorest and Our Global SDG Promises
By Bjorn Lomborg via Copenhagen Consensus Center
May 8, 2023
World leaders have promised everything to everyone. But they are failing. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals are supposed to be delivered by 2030. The goals literally promise everything, like eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease; stopping war and climate change; ending corruption; and fixing education, along with countless other promises. This year, the world is at halftime for its promises, but nowhere near halfway. Based on twelve new, peer-reviewed papers, this book highlights the world’s best policies.
The Art and Practice of Corporate Governance
By David Larcker and Brian Tayan (independently published)
June 23, 2023
The Art and Practice of Corporate Governance examines the central issues of corporate governance today, including board effectiveness, compensation and incentives, organizational risk, succession planning, activism, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance). Written in a clear and direct style, each chapter explores a specific topic within corporate governance, weaving together compelling stories and practical research to illustrate the factors that drive good and bad outcomes.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court
By: John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty via Regnery Publishing
June 27, 2023
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court offers a penetrating and irreverent account of the justices—ideologues and cowards, geniuses and mediocrities, all of them thoroughly human—and a fascinating analysis of a court that has swung like a pendulum from preserving the republic to undermining government by the people and back to defending the Constitution. Sprightly, informative, and powerfully argued, this book is guaranteed to give the reader a deeper understanding of America's most powerful judicial body.
The Sino-Indian Rivalry: Implications for Global Order
By Sumit Ganguly, Manjeet S. Pardesi, and William R. Thompson via Cambridge University Press
June 29, 2023
Drawing on a wide body of literature on international rivalries, this comprehensive and theoretically grounded work explains the origins and evolution of the Sino-Indian rivalry. Contrary to popular belief, the authors argue that the Sino-Indian rivalry started almost immediately after the emergence of the two countries in the global arena. They demonstrate how the rivalry has systemic implications for both Asia and the global order, intertwining the positional and spatial dimensions that lie at the heart of the Sino-Indian relationship.
