What We Are Reading Today: The Earth Transformed

Short Url
Updated 07 April 2023
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Earth Transformed

Author: Peter Frankopan 

In “The Earth Transformed,” Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. 

Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop failure, why the roots of regime change in 11th-century Baghdad lay in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth century.

Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, Frankopan shows that when past empires have failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Fixed’

Updated 22 December 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Fixed’

Authors: John Y. Campbell and Tarun Tamadorai

We interact with the financial system every day, whether taking out or paying off loans, making insurance claims, or simply depositing money into our bank accounts. 

“Fixed” exposes how this system has been corrupted to serve the interests of financial services providers and their cleverest customers—at the expense of ordinary people.

John Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai diagnose the ills of today’s personal finance markets in the US and across the globe, looking at everything from short-term saving and borrowing to loans for education and housing, financial products for retirement, and insurance. 

They show how the system is “fixed” to benefit those who are wealthy and more educated while encouraging financial mistakes by those who are aren’t, making it difficult for regular consumers to make sound financial decisions and disadvantaging them in some of the most consequential economic transactions of their lives.