The Sawa Summer Reading List: 6 Powerful Books on Finance and Community

It’s August and we have a few more weeks to get in some summer reading. Here’s what we’re reading at Sawa — the books that are fundamental to our ideas about community, finance, and behavioral science.

A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty

We appreciate Piketty’s shortened ~300-page version of his 700-page tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century. One of the cornerstones of our thinking is Piketty’s analysis on the wealth gap, particularly that half of the United States owns just 2% of its wealth.?

We also turn to his definition of wealth quite frequently: “That is, of total wealth of land, buildings, business assets, and industrial and financial wealth of all kinds, net of debt” (p. 32). In our society, the bottom half hold their wealth (if they have any) in cash and hard and soft goods, whereas the top 1% hold their assets in land, businesses, and financial wealth.?

When we think about impacting the financial fragility of the bottom 40% or 50%, we often think in terms of getting them into home ownership or starting a business, an idea backed by Piketty’s research.?

The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives by Lisa Servon

We can credit Lisa Servon for helping us more fully understand the mechanism and power of the ROSCA, or Rotating Savings and Credit Association —?which is the basic structure behind the Sawa Savings Wheel.?

Servon points out that most of us —?yes, even you —?are underserved by banks and the financial services and products they offer.?

Nevertheless, Servon’s optimism shines through. The customers the banks have recently disregarded as too risky or too unprofitable are hungry for financial services that serve them and treat them with regard. At Sawa, we see banking as a type of utility. Just like all of us need a cell phone and access to the internet, all of us need banking services that work for us.?

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam

Robert D. Putnam’s Bowling Alone is the seminal text on community and the hazards of losing it. Not so long ago, Americans met up after work in bowling leagues where they bowled together —?a communal activity that created community and powerful social capital.?

Recently, we’ve lost many of our forms of communal activities, including churches, clubs, PTAs, political parties, bowling leagues.?

At Sawa , we believe that there’s untapped power in community and it is one of the keys to healing the pervasive financial fragility in America. Putnam reminds us that we didn’t always feel so alone, and we don’t have to stay alone.?

Nudge: The Final Edition by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler?

Nudge is about how we’re human, and how we make human decisions, many of which are not in our best interest. In fact, so many of the choices we make are influenced by the way the choices are presented. Thaler and Sunstein do an amazing job of outlining the many biases and cognitive shortcomings we’re all susceptible to.?

Thaler and Sunstein acknowledge that those of us who are presenting choices for people to take, such as those of us developing financial services applications, are going to nudge people to make decisions whether we mean to or not. Since we have that impact, Thaler and Sunstein encourage us to use it to nudge people toward positive decisions. For example, if we’re the ones installing trash cans on the promenade, we might consider installing more than are necessary to make them both top of mind and extremely convenient to use. We’re all nudging already, but are we nudging for good??

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson?

When Sawa board member Mike Spence recommends a book about the future of the world, we take note. In fact, we order it right as he says the word. This summer he’s got us reading about the brilliant mind behind CRISPR, an easy-to-use tool for editing DNA. A riveting real-life detective story replete with medical miracles and moral questions. Just fascinating.?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen?

Not sure if you’ve thought about Jane Austen since you had some required reading in high school, but we have. After hearing Michael Chwe talk about his book Jane Austen, Game Theory, we were excited to revisit Austen’s work and see it through an entirely new lens.?

Chwe’s take is that Jane Austen was a game theorist before game theory existed, and we agree. As they put it in the podcast, “Game theory … is about thinking strategically, making conscious decisions, and making those decisions based on how you anticipate someone else responding to your decision. Think of a decision tree, with a lot of branches.” In most Austen novels, there’s a lot of strategic thinking happening, most of it a matter of economic survival.?

Her novels are all the more relevant as she was writing on the heels of an economic crisis about the decisions people make to ensure their financial footing, a problem that is unfortunately quite contemporary.?

Tell us, what are you reading??

What books transformed the way you think? Which texts are cornerstones to the way you approach things and what you build? We’d love it if you left a comment or dropped us an email.