David Runciman

David Runciman’s The Confidence Trap will be published in October. He is a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he teaches politics.

In the LRB Archive:

• Destiny v. Democracy: The New Deal · 25 April 2013

  • Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time by Ira Katznelson

• How can it work?: American Democracy · 21 March 2013

• Take a bullet for the team: The Profumo Affair · 21 February 2013

  • An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo by Richard Davenport-Hines

• Everybody gets popped: Lance Armstrong’s Regime · 22 November 2012

  • The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups and Winning at All Costs by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle

• Stiffed: Occupy · 25 October 2012

  • The Occupy Handbook edited by Janet Byrne

• What if he’d made it earlier?: LBJ · 5 July 2012

  • The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. IV: The Passage of Power by Robert Caro

• Confusion is power: Our Very Own Oligarchs · 7 June 2012

  • The New Few, or a Very British Oligarchy: Power and Inequality in Britain Now by Ferdinand Mount

• Will we be all right in the end?: Europe’s Crisis · 5 January 2012

• Socialism in One County: True Blue Labour · 28 July 2011

  • The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox: The Oxford London Seminars 2010-11 edited by Maurice Glasman, Jonathan Rutherford, Marc Stears and Stuart White

• Swing for the Fences: Mourinho’s Way · 30 June 2011

  • Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by Tobias Moskowitz and Jon Wertheim

• Didn’t they notice?: Offshore · 14 April 2011

  • Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World by Nicholas Shaxson
  • Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson

• Look…: How the coalition was formed · 16 December 2010

  • 22 Days in May: The Birth of the Lib Dem-Conservative Coalition by David Laws

• Preacher on a Tank: Blair Drills Down · 7 October 2010

  • A Journey by Tony Blair

• It’s Been a Lot of Fun: Hitchens’s Hitchens · 24 June 2010

  • Hitch-22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens

• Is this the end of the UK? · 27 May 2010

• Enabler’s Revenge: John Edwards · 25 March 2010

  • The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’s Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down by Andrew Young
  • Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

• I Could Fix That: Clinton · 17 December 2009

  • The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History in the White House by Taylor Branch

• How messy it all is: Who benefits from equality? · 22 October 2009

  • The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

• Like Boiling a Frog: The Future of Wikipedia · 28 May 2009

  • The Wikipedia Revolution by Andrew Lih

• Bouncebackability: Athenian Democracy and Google · 29 January 2009

  • Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens by Josiah Ober

• Diary: The Problem with English Football · 23 October 2008

• Why Not Eat an Eclair?: Why Vote? · 9 October 2008

  • Free Riding by Richard Tuck

• The Cattle-Prod Election: The Point of the Polls · 5 June 2008

• This Way to the Ruin: the British Constitution · 7 February 2008

  • The British Constitution by Anthony King

• Brown and Friends: Brown and Friends · 3 January 2008

• In a Faraway Pond: The NGO · 29 November 2007

  • Non-Governmental Politics edited by Michel Feher

• Diary: Dylan on the radio · 19 July 2007

• Liars, Hypocrites and Crybabies: Blair v. Brown · 2 November 2006

• Juiced: Winners Do Drugs · 3 August 2006

  • Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, Balco and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams

• He shoots! He scores!: José Mourinho · 5 January 2006

  • Mourinho: Anatomy of a Winner by Patrick Barclay

• Cricket’s Superpowers: Beyond the Ashes · 22 September 2005

• Tax Breaks for Rich Murderers: Bush and the ‘Death Tax’ · 2 June 2005

  • Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth by Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro

• Institutional Hypocrisy: Selling the NHS · 21 April 2005

  • Restoring Responsibility: Ethics in Government, Business and Healthcare by Dennis Thompson
  • NHS plc: The Privatisation of Our Healthcare by Allyson Pollock
  • Brown’s Britain by Robert Peston

• Neo-Blairism: Blair’s conference speech · 21 October 2004

• How many jellybeans?: non-spurious generalisations and why the crowd will win · 5 August 2004

  • Profiles, Probabilities and Stereotypes by Frederick Schauer
  • The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few by James Surowiecki

• Betting big, winning small: Blair’s Gambles · 20 May 2004

• The Precautionary Principle: Taking a Chance on War · 1 April 2004

• Oh, the curse!: a home run · 19 February 2004

  • Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball by Stephen Jay Gould
  • Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

• Shockingly Worldly: the Abbé Sieyès · 23 October 2003

  • Emmanuel Sieyès: Political Writings edited by Michael Sonenscher

• Politicians in a Fix: The uses of referendums · 10 July 2003

• The Politics of Good Intentions: Blair’s Masochism · 8 May 2003

• A Bear Armed with a Gun: The Widening Atlantic · 3 April 2003

  • Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order by Robert Kagan

• The Garden, the Park and the Meadow: After the Nation State · 6 June 2002

  • The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt
  • Reordering the World: The Long-Term Implications of 11 September edited by Mark Leonard

• 11 September · 4 October 2001

• Invented Communities: post-nationalism · 19 July 2001

  • Democracy in Europe by Larry Siedentop
  • The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays by Jürgen Habermas, translated by Max Pensky

• Creative Accounting: Money and the Arts · 4 June 1998

  • Artist Unknown: An Alternative History of the Arts Council by Richard Witts
  • In Praise of Commercial Culture by Tyler Cowen

• No Exit · 23 May 1996

  • The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain edited by S.J.D. Green and R.C. Whiting

• The Plot to Make Us Stupid · 22 February 1996

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