Books I Read in 2024
Image: Microsoft clip art Brief reports on books I read in 2024. All are recommended unless noted otherwise. Within each category, I usually list the books I liked the most first. I have already posted about the Brontës and the Falklands War . Non-Fiction Politics and Current Events Austin Frerick, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry (2024) I picked this up because a high school classmate of my sister’s figures prominently. I expected this to be nostalgia for the traditional family farm. There is some of that, but Frerick mostly and effectively describes the real problems with our food system. The main one is the concentration of economic power that increases prices, damages the environment, and undermines food safety. This is a tale of oligopoly and regulatory capture. Frerick tells the story by focusing on the dominant firm in each of seven sectors, while skillfully weaving that firm’s...