Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and economist David Daokui Li as they discuss Professor Li’s brilliant new book, China's World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict . Listen in as Professor Li explains the deep nature of Chinese politics and economics – based on China’s long history, Confucian culture, and meritocratic political system.  Together, they delve into a...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Jessica Rawson, one of the world’s most eminent scholars of China, as they discuss Rawson’s book, Life and Afterlife in Ancient China. Listen in to learn about the roots of Chinese civilization through the stories of twelve grand tombs, each helping to reveal a pivotal phase in China’s history.  Together, they discuss the political, geographical, t...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke as they discuss O’Rourke’s remarkable book, Covert Regime Change .  US foreign policy is based heavily on trying to overthrow foreign governments, and O’Rourke’s account is a powerful and deeply scholarly account of America’s frequent resort to secretive regime-change operations. Her book focuses on the Cold War...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and political scientist John Mearsheimer as they discuss Professor Mearsheimer’s latest book, How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy . Hailed as the most influential foreign policy realist of his generation, Mearsheimer and co-author Prof. Sebastian Rosato provide a groundbreaking examination of a central question in international relation...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and economist Francisco Rodriguez as they discuss Professor Rodriguez’s newest publication, The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions . Prof. Rodriguez is an expert on the use of unilateral economic sanctions - when one country imposes economic costs on another, and shares insights on the US as the main user of such unilateral economic sanctions. Pr...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and two of the world's leading experts on the economics of wellbeing, Lord Richard Layard and Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve to discuss their newest book, Wellbeing: Science and Policy. Together, they examine how wellbeing can be measured and how it can be promoted today and for future generations. What produces a happy life and a happy society? L...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Professor Bruce Cumings, renowned historian and  expert in East-Asian history, to discuss Cuming’s book, The Korean War . Together, they discuss the factors that led to the Korean War, its brutal trajectory, and its powerful and fateful impacts US foreign policy.  The Korean War, though little known or understood today, continues to cast a long sha...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and bestselling science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, to discuss Robinson’s recent books The Ministry for the Future and New York 2140   for a thought provoking conversation on how climate change has and will potentially affect us all.   Together, they explore climate change as an existential threat and the plausible and tumultuous ways the clim...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professors Jeffrey Sachs and Chris Coyne, economist and author of In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace , for an eye-opening examination on whether interventionist methods should ever have a place in foreign policy.  Together, they discuss American imperialism and militaristic culture around the world, proving that nonviolent ap...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Professor Glenn Denning, a world-leading specialist in agricultural and food policy to discuss Denning’s new book Universal Food Security: How to End Hunger While Protecting the Planet. Together, they explore how we can achieve a food-secure world while protecting the planet through sustainable agricultural technologies, farm practices, and healthy...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professors Jeffrey Sachs and Orlando Figes, historian and author of The Crimean War (2012) and his new book, The Story of Russia (2022), in a fascinating discussion of Russian history and ideas about Russian history. Together, they examine the 19th century Crimean War and the powerful light that the Crimean War, 170 years ago, sheds on the current conflict in Ukraine. More ge...

Send us Fan Mail In this special episode, join Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa, and Professor K. Srinath Reddy for their discussion of The Lancet Commission Report on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, they discuss the background to the Commission and the key findings after two years of research. They discuss the possible origins of the virus that cau...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Professor Christopher Blattman, to explore the dynamics of war and peace as they discuss Blattman’s, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace .  In his newest book, Blattman argues that violence is not the norm; that there are five reasons why wars break out; and how peacemakers can draw on these reasons to prevent and stop wars.  Toge...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and neuroscientist Anil Seth, author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness to explore the hard problem of consciousness. Because the deep puzzles of consciousness can’t be solved head-on with existing scientific methods, Seth aims to gradually “dissolve” the problem by looking at levels of consciousness, the content of consciousness, and the mys...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Peter H. Lindert, economic historian and author of Making Social Spending Work in which Lindert examines how social spending relates to economic growth in various countries and the emphasis we must place on investing in the young.  Together, they examine the history of public social spending and address the key challenges around intergenerational i...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Casey Michel, journalist and author of “American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History.”   In his debut book, Michel offers a deep investigation into how the US built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known. Together, they examine just how the US implosion into a cente...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Heather Cox Richardson, renowned historian and author of How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America in which Richardson argues that while the North prevailed in the American Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a “new birth of freedom,” democracy’s blood-soaked victory was eph...

Send us Fan Mail John Professor Jeffrey Sachs and award-winning historian, Dr. Keisha Blain, as they discuss her latest book, Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America . Together, they will situate Fannie Lou Hamer as a key political thinker alongside leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks while illustrating how her ideas remain salient for a n...

Send us Fan Mail John Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Corey Robin, political theorist and author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump   in which Robin argues that conservatism is a reaction against movements of the left—from the French Revolution to feminism. Together, they discuss aspects of such arguments, including the roots of conservatism, and what drives the po...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Eric Foner, as they discuss Foner's latest novel, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution . Together,  they discuss this transformative era in American history, and how the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments remain strong tools for achieving the American ideal of equality,...

Send us Fan Mail John Professor Jeffrey Sachs and highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, to discuss her latest novel, Not “A Nation of Immigrants.”     Together they discuss settler colonialism, white supremacy, and the history of erasure and exclusion in the United States while urging the audience to embrace a more complex and honest...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and historian Rick Perlstein for their discussion of Reaganland .   Together they discuss the "Southernization" of American politics, the causes behind U.S. President Ronald Reagan's rise to power in the 1970s, and the way that conservatives’ cutthroat strategies to gain power remain a powerful political force today. The Book Club with J...

Send us Fan Mail In this month's episode of the Book Club, Jeffrey Sachs and Professor Patricia Sullivan, a leading civil rights historian, place Robert Kennedy at the center of the movement for racial justice of the 1960s—and show how many of today’s issues can be traced back to that pivotal time in US history. Prof. Sullivan is the author of this month's featured book Justice Rising: R...

Send us Fan Mail Join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and New York Times- bestselling author Dr. Robert Lustig for their discussion of Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine , Dr. Lustig's newest book about the interconnected strands of nutrition, health/disease, medicine, environment, and society. Together, they discuss the relationship between nutrition...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Professor Jeffrey Sachs speaks with Dr. Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value and Founding Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London, about her new book Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism . Professors Sachs and Mazzucato discuss the history of public ambitio...