Prompted by Dan Knowles’s excellent blog earlier this week about the Kindle and how great it is for reading longer articles and essays, I’ve decided to start sharing the things I’ve been reading digitally each week.

I’ve had a Kindle for just under a year now, and use it for two things. I read out-of-print works I’ve never got round to before, which are available free from Project Gutenberg, handily formatted for the device you’re using. I also use the Readability bookmarklet (I used to favour Kindlebility, which is great in Firefox but unreliable in other browsers, I’ve found) for clipping long articles from the web that I don’t have time to read during the course of the working day that I then read on my Kindle at a later date, usually on the bus. There's so much great writing out there that you can access for free.

This week, I recommend:

Recovering Adam Smith's ethical economics - The Philosopher’s Beard

Great piece that explores Adam Smith’s work beyond The Wealth of Nations. Turns out he wrote extensively on the ‘moral side of mercantilism’ , something that has been preoccupying our current political leaders quite a bit of late. Handily broken up into helpfully-titled sections so the less-economically competent (like me) can keep up.

Charisma we can believe in – Project Syndicate

Not such a long one this, but well worth some detailed consideration. Can we measure a politician’s charisma in a tangible way for comparative purposes? Or is it in the eye of the beholder, so we see in a particular candidate the type of leader we want at a particular moment?

“Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” Takes on the NYPD – Past Imperfect blog, Smithsonian.com

Fast-paced true story of campaigning lawyer Grace Rumiston, who in New York in 1917 solved a murder case that stumped the NYPD. Like a female Benedict Cumberbatch, but better.

In Which We Teach You How To Be A Woman In Any Boys' Club – This Recording

A brilliantly incisive portrait of gender relations in the workplace, to be read by everyone, but especially women. Includes the immortal piece of advice, too often neglected, that “if you're in competition with the men, you might be better than they are”. Every woman should realise that. Illustrated with some nice pictures from Mad Men, too.

Speech! Speech! – More Intelligent Life

“Churchill's orotundities were Elizabethan, whereas American orators reach not for Shakespeare, but for the cadences of the country's founders and of the Bible.” Sam Leith lays out the fundamental differences between British and American political rhetoric. From a while ago, I think, but in the light of the US presidential election getting underway, still relevant.

Tags: Weekend reads