While there are many fine books published, and it feels a great privilege to sell and promote them, it’s not so often that I come across a book I know holds the potential to have a profound effect on its reader, and the world around them. One such book, from last year, was Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree, which tells wide-ranging stories of parental love. Here are two recent books that struck me in the same way, though both are quite different:

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by French economist Thomas Piketty, has already created a stir among economists and policy makers. Branko Milanovic, an economist at the World Bank, wrote in his 20-page review of the work that ‘we are in the presence of one of the watershed books in economic thinking’. Capital in the Twenty-First Century is 696 pages long and translated from French. It is rich with methodological asides and allusions to nineteenth-century novels. The central thesis of Piketty’s book is that when the return on capital is greater than the growth in income, the rich will become richer and the poor poorer. If this continues, the future will look like the nineteenth century. Economic elites will inherit their wealth rather than work for it, with the inevitable inequalities leading to extreme social discord. As the burden of providing for services such as education, health and housing falls increasingly on the relatively falling incomes of those without substantial capital, unrest and deprivation will follow. The solution, Pikkety argues, is a global tax on wealth. But getting the governments of major economies to agree to such policies is very ambitious, and runs counter to the principles of contemporary conservatives. However, Pikkety’s research and conclusions have been widely praised by fellow economists. Published in English only a few weeks ago, this book is surprisingly readable for what may seem a dry topic, and the book has already sold out worldwide, with more copies expected in early May.

On my way to work recently, I was reminded of the second book I wanted to mention. A homeless man was sitting on the footpath across the street from our office and he was obviously distressed. I wondered if I should do something but thought, No, I shouldn’t bother, he’ll be alright. Afterward, I questioned the sadness I felt – was it empathy? In her book of essays, The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison, a young and very wise American, confronts what empathy means. The book begins with Jamison’s experience of acting out symptoms for medical students to diagnose. Jamison confronts questions like: How should we feel about others?; When they are in pain how de we feel and what do we do?; Is it possible to understand the suffering of others and the impact of their suffering on us? These revealing essays cover a wide spectrum of human experience.

A reviewer from the New York Times commented that ‘watching the philosopher in Ms. Jamison grapple with empathy is a heart-expanding exercise’. I couldn’t agree more.

Mark Rubbo