This article is cross-posted from MIT News and is available online. Excerpts below featuring a book by MIT GOV/LAB Faculty Associate Professor Noah Nathan. 

Summer is the perfect time to curl up with a good book — and MIT authors have had much to offer in the past year. The following titles represent a selection of books published in the past 12 months by MIT faculty and staff. In addition to links for each book from its publisher, the MIT Libraries has compiled a helpful list of the titles held in its collections.

Looking for more literary works from the MIT community? Enjoy our book lists from 2022 and 2021.

Happy reading!

[…]

“The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Power in the Hinterland”

(Cambridge University Press, 2023)

By Noah L. Nathan, professor of political science

The formal state often appears absent in the rural periphery in developing countries. Yet these states are not as weak as many believe. In a multi-method study of historical development in Ghana, Nathan rethinks the process of state-building in hinterlands, demonstrating how even seemingly absent states still change the underlying nature of their societies, with implications for better understanding the governance challenges that these regions face.

Photo by Alexander Wende on Unsplash,