WACHH BoOK CLUB

The Book Club is the newest addition to the World Affairs Council of Hilton Head (WACHH) program offerings. The Book Club presents an opportunity for us all to learn more broadly and deeply about both world affairs and domestic politics, to engage in stimulating discussions, and to make new friendships.

The Book Club is free and open to WACHH members and the public, but advance registration is required.

• Registration for each book club discussion will open one month in advance and is limited to 30 participants.

The Book Club meets the second Thursday of each month from 4:30 to 6:00 pm at The Island Rec Center Board Room, 20 Wilborn Rd, Hilton Head Island (next to the High school).

July 9, 2026

How Economics Explains the World: A Short History of Humanity by Andrew Leigh 

 In How Economics Explains the World, Harvard-trained economist Andrew Leigh presents a new way to understand the human story. From the dawn of agriculture to AI, here is story of how ingenuity, greed, and desire for betterment have, to an astonishing degree, determined our past, present, and future. 

This small book indeed tells a big story. It is the story of capitalism – of how our market system developed. It is the story of the discipline of economics, and some of the key figures who formed it. And it is the story of how economic forces have shaped world history. Why didn’t Africa colonize Europe instead of the other way around? What happened when countries erected trade and immigration barriers in the 1930s? Why did the Allies win World War II? Why did inequality in many advanced countries fall during the 1950s and 1960s? How did property rights drive China’s growth surge in the 1980s? How does climate change threaten our future prosperity? You’ll find answers to these questions and more in How Economics Explains the World.

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August 13, 2026
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson 

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and pre­serves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.

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September 10, 2026

The Great Global Transformation: The United States, China, and the Remaking of the World Economic Order by Branko Milanovic 

From the essential chronicler of the world economy, a portrait of the Great Powers in transition.

The world’s two great economic powers are on opposite trajectories. In the United States, decades of neoliberal policies produced a small class of rich elites and gutted the middle class. In China, the same global forces have created a massive new upper class. The result is the greatest reshuffling of global incomes since the Industrial Revolution—a dramatic shakeup of each country’s political order. As the two powers retreat from one another, the implications for their futures, and for the world economy, are uncertain.

In The Great Global Transformation, acclaimed economist Branko Milanovic draws on original research to chart how these seismic shifts will shape the next century of the global economy. As both the US and China retreat into protectionism, Milanovic shows how a new and multipolar world order will follow—and how rising nationalism will have dramatically different effects on the two countries. And he shows us the fight ahead: as plutocracy returns, global war threatens, and a new system silently shapes our nations, driving populist discontent to the breaking point.

A worthy successor to Capitalism, Alone and his other landmark works, Milanovic’s new book announces the arrival of a new era he terms “national market liberalism,” in which liberalism survives in domestic economies, but not necessarily in the social arena. The Great Global Transformation is Milanovic’s indispensable account of the new twenty-first century now underway.

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October 8, 2026

The Element of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth by Nicolas Niarchos 

The Elements of Power tells the story of the war for the global supply of battery metals—essential for the decarbonization of our economies—and the terrible, bloody human cost of this badly misunderstood industry.

Congo is rich. Swaths of the war-torn African country lack basic infrastructure and its people are officially among the poorest in the world. But hidden beneath the soil are vast quantities of cobalt, lithium, copper, tin, tantalum, tungsten, and other treasures that have become extremely valuable because these metals are essential for the global “energy transition”—the plan for wealthy nations to shift from fossil fuels to sustainable forms of energy, such as solar and wind. China has a considerable head start in the race to electrify the world’s economy. From Indonesia to South America to Central Africa, Beijing has invested in mines and infrastructure for decades. But the U.S. has begun fighting back with massive investments of its own, as well as sanctions and disruptive tariffs.

In this rush for green energy, the world has become utterly reliant on resources unearthed far away and willfully blind to the terrible political, environmental, and social consequences of their extraction. Children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are routinely descending deep into treacherous mines to dig with the most rudimentary of tools, and in some cases their bare hands. Indonesia’s seas and skies are being polluted in a rush for battery metals. Western Sahara, a source for phosphates, is still being treated like a colony. Who must pay the price for progress and why?

With unparalleled, original reporting, Nicolas Niarchos tells the story both of the people driving these tectonic changes and those whose lives are being upended. He reveals the true, devastating consequences of our best intentions and helps us prepare for an uncertain future. If you have ever used a smartphone or driven an electric vehicle, you are implicated

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November 12, 2026

The Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Carlos, the World's First Super-Terrorist by Joby Warrick 

The spectacular rise and dramatic fall of super-assassin Carlos the Jackal—one of history’s most infamous terrorist masterminds and the inspiration for numerous celebrated works of pop culture—told with new revelations from the Jackal himself, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Black Flags.

A black-bereted, gun-slinging avatar of one of the most turbulent eras in global politics, Carlos the Jackal burst onto the world stage in 1975 as the first true celebrity terrorist and the TV-ready face of a violent Palestinian resistance movement that was then just beginning to gain traction. In a bloody career that would ultimately span three decades, Carlos innovated a new kind of spectacular terrorism, one that embraced hijackings, hostage crises, airport bombings, and international assassinations. And he personally masterminded one of the era’s most shocking crimes: the kidnapping for ransom of an entire conference of world oil ministers in Vienna. The polar opposite of most modern terrorists, Carlos prized large paychecks over ideology and styled himself as a swashbuckling lady’s man who, despite his charm, murdered his victims with callous disregard, often with his own hand.

Today, even from behind bars, Carlos can see his influence continue to reverberate. Through newly declassified archives, secret police files, long-repressed eyewitness accounts, and a rare interview with the Jackal himself, acclaimed journalist Joby Warrick reveals Carlos’ far-reaching legacy as a pioneer of borderless terrorist attacks.

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December 10, 2026

The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings From History by Odd Arne Westad 

From a renowned Yale historian comes a chilling look at the looming threat of the next Great Power war and the urgent interventions necessary to avoid it in the twenty-first century.

The vast majority of people alive today have come of age in a world of remarkable stability, presided over by either one or two Superpowers. This is not to say the world has been peaceful; but it has, to a great extent, been predictable. As an increasing number of Great Powers jostle for regional supremacy, as well as competitive advantage in nuclear technology, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and trade, our world has become more fragile, unpredictable—and combustible. The outbreak of global war among today’s Great Powers seems increasingly likely. Such war, as Odd Arne Westad powerfully argues in this urgent book, would be of a magnitude and devastation never before seen.

To understand the threats that face us in this complex new terrain, we must look to the lessons of the past, and especially the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—a time when Great Powers clashed and sought regional dominance, nationalism and populism were on the rise, and many felt that globalization had failed them; a time when tariffs increased, immigration and terrorism were among the biggest issues of the day, and a growing number of people blamed the citizens of other countries for their problems. A time, in other words, that carries eerie parallels with our own.

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Past Book Club Selections

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