As has become the tradition for our last post of the academic year, we’re featuring summer reading recommendations from special people at LSE. This year, two winners of the LSESU Teaching Excellence Awards shared their picks with us.

Steve Pischke, Professor of Economics and Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance, Winner of LSESU Teaching Excellence Award for Research Guidance and Support

I am not sure my recent reading is all that good fare for the summer; in fact, it seems more appropriate for London’s November days. The last book I read was Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveller, a history of inequality from the beginning of humanity to the present day. The author argues that inequality has always been increasing with the exception of periods of extreme violence: mass mobilisation warfare, bloody revolutions (the French one was too tame!), state collapse, and pandemics like the Black Death in the Middle Ages. For me this is the most provocative—and depressing—piece on inequality I have seen in a very long time, and this is a literature I follow as part of my day job. The descriptive account of what happened is most intriguing. Scheidel is weaker when he wants to be analytical and his writing does not rival the best.

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