Reading List Week 28

Published on Wed 15 July 2026 in Reading Lists

Reasons of State: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland

  • A deep-dive into Denmark's 1946 refusal of a $100 million US offer for Greenland. Whether selling part of your country is wrong is a different matter.

How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it

  • Google Maps' ranking algorithm acts as a kind of invisible market maker, deciding which London restaurants get seen, and therefore which survive.

A Development Economist Returns to What He Left Behind

  • A development economist who spent a career studying poverty in Africa comes home to Britain and finds plenty to study there too.

Why American ambulance rides are so expensive

  • How a nice general policy ends up hurting people: America's surprise ambulance bills trace back to 1960s policy quirks that left operators structurally unprofitable.