As 2025 draws to a close, we round up some of the new book releases in the field of economics. 

This is INOMICS pick of new books published from the end of 2024 and in 2025. Grouped into Political Economic Commentaries, Economic Histories, and Introductions to Economics. Whether for yourself or as a gift, the selection below has something for everyone!

1) Political / Economic Commentaries

Exploring political, environmental and social challenges from an economics perspective, these new books are up-to-date and relevant for issues facing global society. Often critical of political elites and economic structures, these new releases provide a provocative yet informed and academically sound basis to approach current affairs.

Abundance 

by Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
Published: March 18, 2025

Description:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025

From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and pre­serves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.

The Growth Story of the 21st Century: The Economics and Opportunity of Climate Action 

by  Nicholas Stern
Published: November 5, 2025

Description:
The world stands at a crossroads. The next decade will determine whether we avoid climate, biodiversity, and economic catastrophe - or unlock a new era of sustainable, resilient, and inclusive growth. The Growth Story of the 21st Century challenges the outdated idea that we must choose between climate action and development. Instead, it presents a compelling case for a transformation that delivers both prosperity and a healthier planet.

Drawing on economics, finance, policy, politics, and behavioural science, Nicholas Stern explores why this transformation is essential, what it entails, and how we can achieve it. He revisits the insights of the Stern Review two decades on and sets out a new research agenda for economics and the social sciences.

This is a story of optimism - about how rapid technological advances, including digitisation and AI, can drive change at scale. But it does not shy away from the immense challenges ahead. With clear and practical strategies for national and international action, this book is a call to leaders, businesses, and individuals alike: the future is in our hands, and delay is the riskiest option of all.

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

by Dan Wang 
Published: August 26, 2025

Description:
For close to a decade, technology analyst Dan Wang―“a gifted observer of contemporary China” (Ross Douthat)―has been living through the country’s astonishing, messy progress. China’s towering bridges, gleaming railways, and sprawling factories have improved economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain throughout the society. This reality―political repression and astonishing growth―is not a paradox, but rather a feature of China’s engineering mindset.

In Breakneck, Wang blends political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal a provocative new framework for understanding China―one that helps us see America more clearly, too. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad

Blending razor-sharp analysis with immersive storytelling, Wang offers a gripping portrait of a nation in flux. Breakneck traverses metropolises like Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen, where the engineering state has created not only dazzling infrastructure but also a sense of optimism. The book also exposes the downsides of social engineering, including the surveillance of ethnic minorities, political suppression, and the traumas of the one-child policy and zero-Covid.

In an era of animosity and mistrust, Wang unmasks the shocking similarities between the United States and China. Breakneck reveals how each country points toward a better path for the other: Chinese citizens would be better off if their government could learn to value individual liberties, while Americans would be better off if their government could learn to embrace engineering―and to produce better outcomes for the many, not just the few.

Kaput: The End of the German Miracle

By Wolfgang Munchau
Published:  27 Mar. 2025

Description
Until recently, Germany appeared to be a paragon of economic and political success. But recent events – from Germany’s dependence on Russian gas to its car industry’s delays in the race to electric – have undermined this view.

In Kaput, Wolfgang Münchau argues that the weaknesses of Germany’s economy have, in fact, been brewing for decades. The close connections between the country’s industrial and political elite have left Germany technologically behind, over-reliant on authoritarian Russia and China, and with little sign of being able to adapt to the digital realities of the twenty-first century. It is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of Europe’s most important economy.

Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back 

by  Marc J. Dunkelman
Published: February 18, 2025

Description:
A provocative exploration about the architecture of power, the forces that stifle us from getting things done, and how we can restore confidence in democratically elected government—“the best book to date on the biggest political issue that nobody is talking about” (Matthew Yglesias)

America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?

America is today the victim of a vetocracy that allows nearly anyone to stifle progress. While conservatives deserve some blame, progressives have overlooked an unlikely culprit: their own fears of “The Establishment.” A half-century ago, progressivism’s designs on getting stuff done were eclipsed by a desire to box in government. Reformers put speaking truth to power ahead of exercising that power for good. The ensuing gridlock has pummeled faith in public institutions of all sorts, stifled the movement’s ability to deliver on its promises, and, most perversely, opened the door for MAGA-style populism. 

A century ago, Americans were similarly frustrated—and progressivism pointed the way out. The same can happen again. Marc J. Dunkelman vividly illustrates what progressives must do if they are going to break through today’s paralysis and restore, once again, confidence in democratically elected government. To get there, reformers will need to acknowledge where they’ve gone wrong. Progressivism’s success moving forward hinges on the movement’s willingness to rediscover its roots.

Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity

by  Yoni Appelbaum 
Published: February 18, 2025

Description:
How did America cease to be the land of opportunity?

We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are only accessible to the wealthy. But in America, this wasn’t always the case.

Though for most of world history, your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and, for two hundred years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity.

In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs’ efforts to protect her vision of the West Village—has raised housing prices, deepened political divides, emboldened bigots, and trapped generations of people in poverty. Appelbaum shows us that these problems have a common explanation: people can’t move as readily as they used to. They are, in a word, stuck.

Cutting through more than a century of mythmaking, Stuck tells a vivid, surprising story of the people and ideas that caused our economic and social sclerosis and lays out common-sense ways to get Americans moving again.

2. Economic History Books

Histories of the Wall Street crash and an overview of the global economy in the last hundred years - both offer compelling reading to anyone interested in economics and political economy.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation

by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Published: October 14, 2025

Description:
From the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail, “the definitive history of the 2008 banking crisis,” (The Atlantic) comes a riveting narrative of the most infamous stock market crash in history—one with ripple effects that still shape our society today.

In 1929, the world watched in shock as the unstoppable Wall Street bull market went into a freefall, wiping out fortunes and igniting a depression that would reshape a generation. But behind the flashing ticker tapes and panicked traders, another drama unfolded—one of visionaries and fraudsters, titans and dreamers, euphoria and ruin.

With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naïveté in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again.

This is not just a story about money. 1929 is a tale of power, psychology, and the seductive illusion that this time is different. It’s about disregarded alarm bells, financiers who fell from grace, and skeptics who saw the crash coming—only to be dismissed until it was too late.

Hailed as a landmark book, Too Big to Fail reimagined how financial crises are told. Now, with 1929, Sorkin delivers an immersive, electrifying account of the most pivotal market collapse of all time—with lessons that remain as urgent as ever. More than just a history, 1929 is a crucial blueprint for understanding the cycles of speculation, the forces that drive financial upheaval, and the warning signs we ignore at our peril.

The Economic Government of the World: 1933-2025

by  Martin Daunton 
Published: 18 Sept. 2025 

Description:
From a leading UK economic historian, this is the history of the institutions and individuals who have managed the global economy, from the World Monetary and Economic Conference in the wake of the Great Depression to the present

Since the Second World War, organisations created at Bretton Woods - the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development - and afterwards - the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - have left an indelible mark on our contemporary world.

Martin Daunton examines the swings of the pendulum over ninety years between the forces of democracy, national determination and globalization. He shows that the structures of economic government have been overwhelmingly shaped by 'first world' powers, often to the dismay of developing countries. He argues that whilst structures cannot be separated from the politics of and between the biggest economies, future global recovery rests on the reduction of inequality and that multilateral institutions are fundamental in fostering inclusive growth.

3. Introductions to Economics for non (or not-yet) Economists

Finally, here are two new books for not-yet-economists who are interested in the field. 

If you are an economist,buy them as a gift to share your love of economics with your loved ones. Perfect to encourage more stimulating conversations over Christmas, and ever after, with relatives and friends who, up to know, have never really understood what you do...

The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained 

by DK
Published: November 26, 2024 

Description:
Explore the key milestones in the field of economics broken down clearly and simply with The Economics Book.
Learn about economics in this overview guide to the subject, which is brilliant for novices looking to learn more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge.

Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy-to-follow format. The Economics Book brings a fresh, vibrant take on the topic, breaking it down in a visual way through images and diagrams.
This book will broaden your understanding of Economics with:

Some of the greatest ideas in economics
Facts, charts, timelines, and graphs to help explain core concepts
A visual approach to big subjects with illustrations and graphics throughout
Easy-to-follow text, making topics accessible for people at any level of understanding

The Economics Book is a captivating introduction to historically important and emerging ideas in a field of science that often confuses newcomers. It is aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Discover some of the greatest ideas, from the earliest development of private property to the cutting-edge development of modern game theory.

Economics: The Economist Guide

by Philip Coggan   
Published: November 4, 2025

Description:
From its humble beginnings in Ancient Greece to today's mammoth global system, economics is all around us.

Getting to grips with what it means is crucial to understanding how the world works: it's never been more important to know your macro from your micro and your fiscal from your monetary policy.

In this invaluable guide, Philip Coggan lifts the veil with an entertaining, no-nonsense overview of the development and scope of the field, and breaks down the jargon with an all-new A-Z of key economics concepts and terms.

Crisp, sophisticated and often surprising, this is the complete companion to what economics is - and why it matters.

If you have more suggestions, share them in the comments below or contact us at info@inomics.com.

Happy Reading!

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