‘One of the most powerful books in the social sciences ever written’ Thomas Piketty'The twentieth century's most prophetic critic of capitalism' Prospect‘Polanyi’s revolutionary work is a must-read’ Mariana MazzucatoKarl Polanyi's landmark 1944 work is one of the earliest and most powerful critiques of unregulated markets. Tracing the history of capitalism from the great transformation of the industrial revolution onwards, he shows that there has been nothing 'natural' about the market state. Instead of reducing human relations and our environment to mere commodities, the economy must always be embedded in civil society.Describing the 'avalanche of social dislocation' of his time, Polanyi’s hugely influential work is a passionate call to protect our common humanity. ‘Polanyi's vision for an alternative economy re-embedded in politics and social relations offers a refreshing alternative’ Guardian‘Polanyi exposes the myth of the free market’ Joseph E. StiglitzWith a new introduction by G
From one of the world’s leading economists, a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, yet left us unsatisfied Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870–2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo. Economist Brad DeLong's Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe, and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right dir
This engagingly written and deeply ethnographic work examines the economic and political factors that led to the Greek debt crisis, including financial pressures from international lenders, unregulate
An in-depth exploration of the central role that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) played in China's transformation from socialism to capitalismMany interpret this transition as the result of the "bet
Through an exploration of British rule in southeast Asia between 1770-1890, this book shows the importance of Britain’s political and commercial hegemony in creating present-day “Asian-tiger” economie
