Literary theory: The antitrust books you should have read in 2020: Part 1

One year ago, I wrote The Antitrust Books You Should Have Read in 2019. In the conclusion, I looked ahead to books to be published in 2020. Given the many books that were already announced, I remarked that ‘the question will be where to find the time to read them all.’ The past year gave us the answer: stuck at home, in between Zoom meetings.

While the context was not ideal, the past year was another very productive one when it comes to competition law publishing. Compared to 2019, fewer editions of authoritative textbooks appeared. However, at least as many—if not more—antitrust books aimed at a wider audience were released. While I noted last year that ‘the great majority of these books come from the US, where an antitrust revival [is] ongoing’, Europe has also seen a number of releases last year, which makes for a more balanced picture.

I am therefore happy to present this second edition of The Antitrust Books You Should Have Read Last Year, which follows the first edition’s format. Picking just five or six books was not easy, given that quite a number of competition law books published over the last year merit every antitrust aficionado’s attention. In this first instalment, I have included an initial three books, namely Monopolized, Competition Overdose and Competition is Killing Us. The first shows that, despite last year’s many books on monopoly, the story was still not fully told. And while competition is generally prescribed as the remedy for problems of monopoly, the latter two demonstrate that there can be too much of a good thing.