Books of the Year 2017
Politics and current affairs
The Retreat of Western Liberalism. By Edward Luce. Grove Atlantic; 234 pages; $24. Little Brown; £16.99
Few doubt that something big has happened in Western politics over the past two years, but nobody is sure what. Turmoil in Washington and London contrasts with centrist stability in Paris and (mostly) in Berlin. In this grim diagnosis Edward Luce, a Washington-based commentator, argues that the liberal order cannot be fixed without a clear view of what has gone wrong.
Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System. By Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. Oxford University Press; 288 pages; $18.95. Allen Lane; £20
Lost in the row over Europe’s migration crisis in 2015 were the millions of refugees who stayed in the developing world, unwilling or unable to journey to richer countries. Growing up in a refugee camp often means little education and no work. Two experts at Oxford...Continue reading