Rating: 7.2/10. Immigration in the 21st Century: The Comparative Politics of Immigration Policy by Terri Givens, Rachel Navarre, Pete Mohanty A academic book that discusses the history and politics of immigration, with a primary focus on the US, Australia, and Canada, and countries in Europe, including Britain, France, and Germany. It explores how these countries…
Category: Social Sciences
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/canadian-regime.jpg)
The Canadian Regime by Malcolmson, Myers, Baier, Bateman
Rating: 8.6/10. The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Parliamentary Government in Canada by Patrick Malcolmson, Richard Myers, Gerald Baier, Tom Bateman Textbook that explains the structure, principles, and patterns of legal processes in the Canadian democratic government system. It includes the constitution, political policies, various parts of the government, and how they make decisions. The…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/seeing-state.jpg)
Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott
Rating: 7.8/10. Book covering multiple topics in politics, ecology, and sociology — the main argument of the book is a case against “Authoritarian High Modernism,” which essentially refers to the idea of imposing top-down control over society and using scientific and mathematical principles to enhance efficiency. This concept is most notably exemplified in the authoritarian…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/license-to-travel.jpg)
License to Travel by Patrick Bixby
Rating: 7.1/10. License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport by Patrick Bixby Book about the history of the passport from ancient times to the modern era and reflects on what the passport represents. The passport, although a modern concept, has a long history and carries significant symbolic meaning. It epitomizes the control an…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/culture-map.jpg)
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
Rating: 7.7/10. The Culture Map by Erin Meyer: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures Book about how cultures differ across the world, categorizing differences among cultures along eight dimensions. Cultural differences can often lead to misunderstandings without either side realizing it. This is especially important in management where your words…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/uprising.jpg)
This Is an Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler
Rating: 8.0/10. This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler Book about the mechanics and strategies of protests: a common misconception that protests and uprisings are spontaneous, but in reality they involve careful planning. The book studies the strategy behind successful nonviolent protests and what…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/nurture-assumption.jpg)
The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris
Rating: 7.4/10. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do by Judith Rich Harris Book about parenting, arguing for the thesis that parents essentially have no effect on how children turn out. Except in cases of extremely severe abuse, parents have no effect on children, after accounting for factors like genetics. Culture…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/thinking-systems.jpg)
Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows
Rating: 7.4/10. Book about analyzing “systems”: basically, any collection of things that are interconnected and produce emergent properties. In many situations you will be led astray if you only look at individual events or pieces of the system, you have to analyze the system as a whole to understand its behavior. Examples of systems are:…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/thinkingfast.jpg)
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Rating: 6.7/10. Influential book by Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel Prize in economics for his work on behavioral economics. The main idea of this book is we have two systems for making decisions, call them System 1 and System 2. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and effortless; System 2 is slow, logical, and takes…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/science-since.jpg)
Science Since Babylon by Derek de Solla Price
Rating: 8.0/10. Book containing several mostly independent essays about aspects of science, mostly from a historical and sociological perspective. The first essay compares Greek and Babylonian science: Greeks were more geometric while Babylonians were good at calculations, but when their cultures came in contact, new ideas emerged combining their sciences to predict astronomical motion. Essays…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/dictator-handbook.jpg)
The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
Rating: 7.7/10. Summary Why do dictators consistently become terrible instead of doing what’s best for their country? This book explains the rules that govern dictatorships: using selectorate theory (proposed by the authors), they explain how incentives in dictatorships naturally tend toward a stable equilibrium that’s bad for most of its inhabitants, but democracies tend towards…
![](https://www.luckybookshelf.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/human-transit.jpg)
Human Transit by Jarrett Walker
Rating: 8.3/10. Book about city planning, specifically designing for public transit. Public transit is any form of transport that has a fixed schedule and is open to the public. Although public transit is familiar to all of us, there are still many non-obvious design considerations, and often there are tradeoffs where you cannot satisfy all…