Top Hacker News Book Recommendations in Law (all time)

All Time Past 6 Months

The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead

David Callahan

4.4 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

Beth Macy

4.6 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process

Alan Dershowitz

4.4 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power

Victor Davis Hanson, Bob Souer, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up

Patricia Ryan Madson

4.4 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Negotiation: Theory and Strategy (Aspen Casebook) (Aspen Casebook Series)

Russell Korobkin

4.5 on Amazon

2 HN comments

The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

4.6 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Among the Thugs

Bill Buford

4.5 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America

Charles Murray

? on Amazon

2 HN comments

All You Need to Know About the Music Business: 10th Edition

Donald S. Passman

4.8 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods

Amelia Pang

4.5 on Amazon

2 HN comments

The Authoritarians: Their Assault on Individual Liberty, the Constitution, and Free Enterprise from the 19th Century to the Present

Jonathan W. Emord

4.7 on Amazon

2 HN comments

Follow the Money: The Shocking Deep State Connections of the Anti-Trump Cabal

Dan Bongino

4.8 on Amazon

1 HN comments

Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit

John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker, et al.

4.7 on Amazon

1 HN comments

The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

Melinda Gates and Macmillan Audio

4.6 on Amazon

1 HN comments

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alkylketoneonDec 16, 2019

I'm curious what you think of The Narrow Corridor, also by Acemoglu and Robinson. I finished Nations recently, not sure I should jump right to Corridor next?

gamegoblinonJune 23, 2021

The book "Why Nations Fail" and the followup by the same authors "The Narrow Corridor" paints a fairly convincing picture that the success or failure of many modern Latin American countries is directly correlated with the extent to which the Spanish colonialists were able to enslave/subjugate the indigenous population, and the types of societies and institutions that followed that initial seed. For example, in modern day Bolivia you can overlay a Spanish colonial map detailing how much forced labor must be performed in each region with a modern poverty map and there is still a high degree of correlation.

"The Narrow Corridor" has an entire chapter devoted to examining the differences between Costa Rica and its neighbor Guatemala.

Guatemala had a large indigenous population that was forced to work on Encomiendas -- essentially Spanish plantations worked by indigenous slaves. This resulted in large swaths of land to be controlled by a few elite. This imbalance eventually results in a highly extractive and exploitative political and economic system. The same 8 families that were major Spanish colonial landowners still essentially run the country (though apparently their power is finally waning). The Castillo family has been the most powerful for literally half a millennium.

Contrast this with Costa Rica which was far more sparsely populated. This resulted in small landholders working their own plots of land, and, in the short term, relative poverty compared to other Spanish conquered lands. But being overlooked by the Spanish, and having a wide spread of land ownership across the populace resulted in a homegrown movement of rural democracy.

Links for further reading:

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/04/03/the-influe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rica#Spanish_colonizatio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_El_Salvador#The_oli... (El Salvador, but a similar situation)

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