End of the Year Book Recommendations with Jamin Hübner

In this final episode of 2020, we decided to do a retrospective episode about the best recently published books we had read this year. For this conversation I am joined by Jamin Hübner, a friend, scholar, and voracious reader who has regularly writes book reviews for Faith & Economics. Over the course of our conversation we take turns recommending books and talking about the big ideas in them. We cover over a dozen books in the hour, and all the titles are available here in the show notes.

I wanted to have this conversation with Jamin for a number of reasons, one of which is that he is an accomplished book reviewer. Despite his young age, he has written over 70 published book reviews. Perhaps more importantly, he comes from a different ideological position than I do, and reads different books. You will see in our conversation, sometimes he sounds like a libertarian and sometimes he sounds like a socialist, and his book choices reflect his decision to research socialism and historic social democratic movements.

Jamin’s background is interesting too. He has graduate degrees in Religion, Theology and applied economics, he has written multiple books, and has been, among other things, a professor of Christian studies, business, and economics, and the founding editor of the Christian Libertarian Review. Today he is a Research Fellow at the Center for Faith and Human Flourishing at LCC international university, and is teaching at the University of the People and at Western Dakota Technical Institute.

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McMullen Picks:

Mary Hirschfeld, Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy

Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized

T.M. Scanlon, Why Does Inequality Matter?

Michael Tanner, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor

Heather Boushey, Unbound: How Inequality Constricts our Economy and What we Can Do about It

Jonathan Rothwell, Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society

David Smith, Kara Sevensma, Marjorie Terpstra and Steven McMullen, Digital Life Together: The Challenge of Technology for Christian Schools

Brandon Sanderson, The Stormlight Archives

Hübner Picks:

Jamin’s writing about the episode and some of his book choices for a newspaper column.