● Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street
By Sheelah Kolhatkar
Review via Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Steve Cohen had a target on his back. The government was determined to prove that the hedge fund manager, known on Wall Street for eye-popping annual returns of 30 percent, made some of his billions trading on inside information. Sheelah Kolhatkar, a staff writer at the New Yorker (and a former correspondent for this magazine), has written a fast-paced tale of how the feds worked for almost a decade to build a case against him, and why they couldn’t indict him, in Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street
● Data for the People: How to Make Our Post-Privacy Economy Work for You
By Andreas Weigend
Review via Publishers Weekly
Many readers are likely to be resistant to this book’s underlying premise—that “the time has come to recognize that privacy is nothing more than an illusion.” Weigend, the onetime chief scientist of Amazon, certainly delineates, in familiar ways, how the “Internet of things,” and the capacity to create, record, store and analyze data, can be beneficial. But some of his speculative future tools—such as creating “trust coefficients” that tie one’s reputation, in a measurable numeric way, to that of a friend—come across as frighteningly Orwellian, and he provides no emotionally intelligent examination of the toll on human interactions.
● The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
By Brad Stone
Review via CBS News
Stone’s new book, “The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World,” chronicles the new generation of entrepreneurs who are disrupting industries including travel and transportation.
“It was eight years ago at Barack Obama’s inauguration that these two sets of founders were anonymous in the crowd that day. And in eight years, together, they’re worth $99 billion. And they’ve reshaped cities. It’s incredible,” said Stone, who is also Bloomberg News’ head of global technology coverage.
● Brookings Big Ideas for America
Edited by Michael O’Hanlon
Summary via pubisher (Brookings Institution Press)
What are the biggest issues facing the country as Donald Trump and the GOP-led 115th Congress take office? Any new administration faces a myriad of issues and problems it must take on as it ascends to power. In this volume, Brookings scholars and others offer their solutions, from Ben Bernanke and Richard Bush to Richard Reeves and Dayna Matthew, from Bob Reischauer and Alice Rivlin to Robert Kagan and Elaine Kamarck, to Belle Sawhill, Doug Elmendorf, David Wessel, Bill Galston, and Carol Graham, as well as many others.
