Category: 3-BookTalkDaily

Tax havens in offshore lands like Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas were once considered a rarity, the preserve of the super-rich. Today, they are big business available to the masses. Their goal? To avoid any form of accountability. Own nothing. Possess everything. Be answerable to no one. Where are these tax havens? What forms can they take? What future lies in store for them, and why should we care?

An Anatomy of Tax Havens: Europe, the Caribbean and the United States of America (de Gruyter, 2023) answers these questions, and more, in the first comparative study in one volume of European, Caribbean and United States tax havens.

It examines their simple origin to the extreme forms some take today, delving into the murky subculture that has deliberately made them impenetrably obscure. Uniquely, it combines detailed technical expertise (regulatory regimes, financial crime, legal and equitable structuring) with an analysis of their impact on domestic and global political, economic, environmental and social concerns.

An Anatomy of Tax Havens is a fascinating, informative read for a broad readership; from legal, accountancy and tax practitioners to compliance regulators, law enforcement agencies, and students and researchers interested in business studies, taxation, and crime.

Paul R. Beckett is a Lawyer and Academic, specializing in company, commercial and trust law; banking and fund management; cryptocurrencies and the blockchain. He practices on the Isle of Man.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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What do a barracks for British troops in the Falklands War, a floating jail off the Bronx, and temporary housing for VW factory workers in Germany have in common? The Balder Scapa: a single barge that served all three roles. Though the name would eventually change to Finnboda 12. And then to Safe Esperia. And later on, to the Bibby Resolution. And after that . . . in short, a vessel with so many names, and so many fates, that to keep it in our sights—as the protagonist of this fascinating economic parable—Ian Kumekawa has no choice but to call it, simply, the Vessel.
Despite its sturdy steel structure, weighing 9,500 deadweight tons, the Vessel is a figure as elusive and abstract as the offshore market it comes to embody: a world of island tax havens, exploited labor forces, free banking zones, Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and mass incarceration, where even the prisoners are held offshore. Fitted with modular shipping containers, themselves the product of standardized global trade, the ship could become whatever the market demanded. Whether caught in an international dispute involving Hong Kong, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the Virgin Islands—to be settled in an English court of law—or flying yet another foreign “flag of convenience” to mask its ownership—the barge is ever a container for forces much larger than even its hulking self.
Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge is a jaw-dropping microhistory that speaks volumes about the global economy as a whole. In following the Vessel—and its Sister Vessel, built alongside it in Stockholm—from one thankless task to the next, Kumekawa connects the dots of a neoliberal world order in the making, where regulation is for suckers and “Made in USA” feels almost quaint.

Dr. Ian Kumekawa is a historian of economic thinking, capitalism, and empire. He is currently an Anniversary Fellow at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University and a Lecturer in History at MIT. He previously published a book called 'The First Serious Optimist' about Pigou and the birth of welfare economics. His second book, which we will discuss today is called, Empty Vessel: The Global Economy in One Barge, came out with Knopf and John Murray in May 2025.

Sidney Michelini is a post-doctoral researcher working on Ecology, Climate, and Violence at the Peace Research Institute of Frankfurt (PRIF).

Book Recomendations:

The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World by Maya Jasanoff
The Toxic Ship:The Voyage of the Khian Sea and the Global Waste Trade by Simone M. MüllerThe Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

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Between May 21 and June 16, 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on a trip together through Upstate New York and parts of New England on horseback. This "northern journey" came at a moment of tension for the new nation, one in whose founding these Virginians and political allies had played key roles. The Constitution was ratified and President Washington was in his first term of office. Whether the country could overcome regional and political differences and remain unified, however, was still very much in question. Hence why some observers at the time wondered whether this excursion into Federalist New England by the two most prominent southern Democratic-Republicans, both future presidents, had an ulterior motive.

Madison, maintained that the journey was for "health, recreation, and curiosity." He and Jefferson needed a break from their public responsibilities, so off they set. Along the way, they took notes on the ravages of the Hessian Fly, an insect that had been devastating wheat crops. While in Vermont, they focused on the sugar maple tree, which many hoped might offer a domestic alternative to slave-grown sugar cane imports. An encounter with a free Black farmer at Fort George resulted in a journal entry that illuminates their attitudes toward slavery and race. A meeting with members of the Unkechaug tribe on Long Island led to a vocabulary project that preoccupied Jefferson for decades, and which remains relevant today.

The northern journey was also about friendship. Madison later recalled that the trip made Jefferson and him "immediate companions," solidifying a bond with almost no peer in the annals of American history, one that thrived for fifty years. Jefferson declared at the end of his life, that his friendship with Madison had been "a source of constant happiness" to him. A Journey North: Jefferson, Madison, and the Forging of a Friendship (Oxford University Press, 2025) reveals the moment when it took hold.

Louis P. Masur is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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Arthur Sze, one of the most acclaimed poets of our time, is celebrated for exploring the natural world, the human condition and connections between cultures. A second-generation Chinese American based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sze’s work invites readers to deepen their sense of place and reflect on the world around them. Jeffrey Brown spoke with Sze for our Arts and Culture series, CANVAS. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

In Defending Rumba in Havana: The Sacred and the Black Corporeal Undercommons (Duke University Press, 2025), anthropologist and dancer Maya J. Berry examines rumba as a way of knowing the embodied and spiritual dimensions of Black political imagination in post-Fidel Cuba. Historically a Black working-class popular dance, rumba, Berry contends, is a method of Black Cuban struggle that provides the community, accountability, sustenance, and dignity that neither the state nor the expanding private market can. Berry’s feminist theorization builds on the notion of the undercommons to show how rumba creates a space in which its practitioners enact deeply felt and dedicatedly defended choreographies of reciprocity, refusal, sovereignty, devotion, and pleasure, both on stage and in their daily lives. Berry demonstrates that this Black corporeal undercommons emphasizes mutual aid and refuses neoliberal development logics, favoring instead a collective self-determination rooted in African diasporic spiritual practices through which material compensation and gendered power dynamics are negotiated. By centering rumba to analyze how poor Black Cubans navigate gendered and racialized life, Berry helps readers better understand the constraints and yearnings that move diasporic Black struggles to seek refuge beyond the bounds of the nation-state.

Maya J. Berry is Assistant Professor of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).

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In The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay (Grand Central Publishing, 2025) Christopher Clarey illuminates the skill and determination it took to accomplish Rafael Nadal’s most mind-blowing achievement: 14 French Open titles. Nadal has won big on tennis's many surfaces en route to becoming one of the greatest players of all time: securing two Wimbledon titles on grass and four U.S. Open titles on cushioned acrylic hardcourts. But clay, the slowest and grittiest of the game’s playgrounds, is where it all comes together best for his tactical skills, whipping topspin forehand and gladiatorial mindset. Clay is to Rafael Nadal what water is to Michael Phelps, which helps explain one of the most impressive individual sports achievements of the 21st century.

Clarey draws on interviews over many years with Nadal and his team and with rivals like Roger Federer. Not just a book about tennis, The Warrior draws much wider lessons from Nadal’s approach to competition. Check out his site Tennis and Beyond here.

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, will be out in the fall of 2025. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.

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Today I’m thrilled to launch a brand new series for the Princeton UP Ideas Podcast. 20 years ago, Princeton University Press published a short volume with an excellent title: On Bullshit (Princeton UP, 2025). Written by philosopher Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit was adapted from an essay that explored the meaning, uses, and consequences of bullshit.

At just 80 pages, On Bullshit became a favorite of readers, selling over 1 million copies and spending 27 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s not often that a work of philosophy breaks through to the mainstream, but readers of On Bullshit quickly discover why. Harry’s meditation on the meaning of bullshit can be read in one sitting, but the ideas have staying power. After you read Harry’s book, you start to see bullshit everywhere and recognize it’s uniquely pernicious effects on whatever’s left of the public square. Harry wrote his book long before modern social media and AI-generated slop. He was unbelievably prescient, making On Bullshit required reading for today. Harry sadly passed in 2023 at 94 years old, but his ideas live on. In this series, we’ll speak with scholars whose lives and work have been influenced by Harry and his seminal book.

To kick things off, I’ll be speaking with Pamela Hieronymi, one of Harry’s former students. Pamela is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA and a leading scholar in the field of moral philosophy. Like Harry, her work has resonated outside the academy. She served as an advisor on the sitcom, The Good Place, which brought philosophical concepts like the trolley problem to a mainstream audience. For the first episode in the series, Pamela will introduce readers to both the book and the man who wrote it. In subsequent episodes, I’ll speak with other scholars who explore Harry’s notion of bullshit in politics, science, and more. If you haven’t read On Bullshit, you should preorder the anniversary edition, which is set to release on August 5th. Now, let’s have ourselves a bull session.

Pamela Hieronymi is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Watch her lecture on the blame game.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

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Research shows that repression can lead to both radicalization and deradicalization. When does it drive groups to pick up arms, and under what conditions does it foster disengagement from violence? To answer these questions, it is important to trace tactical changes over time, and to parse the factors that push groups toward or away from violence. Through an examination of four case studies—the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya'a in Egypt, and Darul Islam and Jemaah Islamiyaa in Indonesia—Ioana Emy Matesan establishes a framework for understanding what leads groups to escalate towards violence, or to renounce it. Matesan breaks down how escalation occurs into ideological, organizational, and behavorial escalation, giving us a nuanced and systematic approach to examining the complex nature of Islamist groups and providing a structure for analyzing other social groups that engage in violent tactics.

The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia (Oxford UP, 2020).

Ioana Emy Matesan is Assistant Professor of Government and Tutor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University.

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Millions of Americans are expected to go on a European vacation this summer. Many of those going for the first time are likely to be following the advice of travel writer Rick Steves, host of “Rick Steves’ Europe” on PBS stations. John Yang sits down with him for our Weekend Spotlight series. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Dr. Carla Hayden, a trailblazing librarian of Congress, was fired by President Trump in May. Geoff Bennett recently spoke with her about being blindsided by the decision, the administration’s ongoing efforts to reshape key institutions and why she intends to keep speaking out. It’s for our series, Art in Action, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, as part of our CANVAS coverage. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders