Slouching Towards Utopia

Author : J. Bradford DeLong
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465023363
Total Pages : 532 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Slouching Towards Utopia written by J. Bradford DeLong and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller from one of the world’s leading economists, offering a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, but left us unsatisfied “A magisterial history.”—​Paul Krugman Named a Best Book of 2022 by Financial Times * Economist * Fast Company 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 direction.

Author : Brad de Long
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 1399803441
Total Pages : 809 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Slouching Towards Utopia written by Brad de Long and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 809 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST ECONOMICS BOOK OF THE YEAR AND THE ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR From one of the world's leading economists, a sweeping new history of the twentieth century - a century that left us vastly richer, yet still profoundly dissatisfied. Before 1870, most people lived in dire poverty, the benefits of the slow crawl of invention continually offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation, and creatively destroying the economy again and again. Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of the major economic and technological shifts of the 20th century in a bold and ambitious, grand narrative. In vivid and compelling detail, DeLong charts the unprecedented explosion of material wealth after 1870 which transformed living standards around the world, freeing humanity from centuries of poverty, but paradoxically has left us now with unprecedented inequality, global warming, and widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. How did the long twentieth century fail to deliver the utopia our ancestors believed would be the inevitable result of such material wellbeing? How did humanity end up less on a march to progress than a slouch in the right direction? And what can we learn from the past in pursuit of a better world?

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Slouching Towards Utopia? written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : George Scialabba
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781940396422
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Slouching Toward Utopia written by George Scialabba and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Politics. SLOUCHING TOWARD UTOPIA is George Scialabba's fifth collection from Pressed Wafer, following WHAT ARE INTELLECTUALS GOOD FOR? (2009), THE MODERN PREDICAMENT (2011), FOR THE REPUBLIC (2013), and LOW DISHONEST DECADES (2016). Like the others, SLOUCHING TOWARD UTOPIA features trenchant commentary on contemporary politics and culture, couched in graceful and limpid prose. In addition to reviews of Samuel Huntington, Ivan Illich, Alexander Cockburn, and Mark Lilla, along with a dozen others, there is a symposium contribution on identity politics, two long interviews about intellectuals and American politics, and the title essay, a lecture offering an original meditation on how to get past the conventional wisdom about political morality and begin to at least stumble toward utopia. Samuel Moyn has called George Scialabba "a national treasure of long standing" and "our preeminent chronicler of American public intellectuals," and says that "this new collection of his inimitable essays and reviews is one every serious reader needs." Art Goldhammer calls SLOUCHING TOWARD UTOPIA "a collection of elegant, erudite, eminently humane meditations...that illuminate these dark days of the Republic with admirable intellectual rigor. [Scialabba's] is a quiet voice that needs to be heard above the raucous cacophony that dominates our public space." In his Foreword to SLOUCHING TOWARD UTOPIA, Jedediah Purdy praises Scialabba for writing "lucidly about benightedness, vividly about purblindness, so that his essays and reviews show thought as a thing possible in a world that can seem a conspiracy against sense and reason." George worked for 35 years in building management at Harvard University in order to support his book-reviewing habit. When he retired in 2015, the city of Cambridge declared a "George Scialabba Day," and Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Frank, and others gathered to celebrate.

Author : Robert H. Bork
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062030914
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Slouching Towards Gomorrah written by Robert H. Bork and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-11-16 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this New York Times bestselling book, Robert H. Bork, our country's most distinguished conservative scholar, offers a prophetic and unprecedented view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling: a nation that slouches not towards the Bethlehem envisioned by the poet Yeats in 1919, but towards Gomorrah. Slouching Towards Gomorrah is a penetrating, devastatingly insightful exposé of a country in crisis at the end of the millennium, where the rise of modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification), has undermined our culture, our intellect, and our morality. In a new Afterword, the author highlights recent disturbing trends in our laws and society, with special attention to matters of sex and censorship, race relations, and the relentless erosion of American moral values. The alarm he sounds is more sobering than ever: we can accept our fate and try to insulate ourselves from the effects of a degenerating culture, or we can choose to halt the beast, to oppose modern liberalism in every arena. The will to resist, he warns, remains our only hope.

Author : W. C. Harris
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 143845113X
Total Pages : 279 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Slouching towards Gaytheism written by W. C. Harris and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2014-02-19 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slouching towards Gaytheism brings together two intellectual traditions—the New Atheism and queer theory—and moves beyond them to offer a new voice for gay Americans and atheists alike. Examining the continued vehemence of homophobia in cultural and political debate regarding queer equality, this unabashed polemic insists that the needs met by religion might be met—more safely and less toxically—by forms of community that do not harass and malign gay and lesbian Americans or impede collective social progress. W. C. Harris argues that compromises with traditional religion, no matter how enlightened or well intentioned, will ultimately leave heteronormativity alive and well. He explores a range of recent movements, such as Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project, reparative "ex-gay" therapy, Christian purity culture, and attempts by liberal Christians to reconcile religion with homosexuality, and shows how these proposed solutions are either inadequate or positively dangerous. According to the author, the time has come for "gaytheism": leaving religion behind in order to preserve queer dignity, rights, and lives.

Author : Joan Didion
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Slouching Towards Bethlehem written by Joan Didion and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1990 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A RICH DISPLAY OF SOME OF THE BEST PROSE WRITTEN TODAY IN THE USA.

Author : Stephen S.Cohen
Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN 13 : 1458757862
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The End of Influence written by Stephen S.Cohen and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-05 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of World War II, the United States had all the money-and all the power. Now, America finds itself cash poor, and to a great extent power follows money. InThe End of Influence, renowned economic analysts Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong explore the grave consequences this loss will have for Americars"s place in the world. America, Cohen and DeLong argue, will no longer be the worldrs"s hyperpower. It will no longer wield soft cultural power or dictate a monolithic foreign policy. More damaging, though, is the blow to the worldrs"s ability to innovate economically, financially, and politically. Cohen and DeLong also explore Americanrs"s complicated relationship with China, the misunderstood role of sovereign wealth funds, and the return of state-led capitalism. An essential read for anyone interested in how global economics and finance interact with national policy,The End of Influenceexplains the far-reaching and potentially long-lasting but little-noted consequences of our great fiscal crisis.

Author : Mark Koyama
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509540245
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.42/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How the World Became Rich written by Mark Koyama and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-03-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most humans are significantly richer than their ancestors. Humanity gained nearly all of its wealth in the last two centuries. How did this come to pass? How did the world become rich? Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin dive into the many theories of why modern economic growth happened when and where it did. They discuss recently advanced theories rooted in geography, politics, culture, demography, and colonialism. Pieces of each of these theories help explain key events on the path to modern riches. Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in 18th-century Britain? Why did some European countries, the US, and Japan catch up in the 19th century? Why did it take until the late 20th and 21st centuries for other countries? Why have some still not caught up? Koyama and Rubin show that the past can provide a guide for how countries can escape poverty. There are certain prerequisites that all successful economies seem to have. But there is also no panacea. A society’s past and its institutions and culture play a key role in shaping how it may – or may not – develop.

Author : Marc Levinson
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465096565
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Extraordinary Time written by Marc Levinson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The decades after World War II were a golden age across much of the world. It was a time of economic miracles, an era when steady jobs were easy to find and families could see their living standards improving year after year. And then, around 1973, the good times vanished. The world economy slumped badly, then settled into the slow, erratic growth that had been the norm before the war. The result was an era of anxiety, uncertainty, and political extremism that we are still grappling with today. In An Extraordinary Time, acclaimed economic historian Marc Levinson describes how the end of the postwar boom reverberated throughout the global economy, bringing energy shortages, financial crises, soaring unemployment, and a gnawing sense of insecurity. Politicians, suddenly unable to deliver the prosperity of years past, railed haplessly against currency speculators, oil sheikhs, and other forces they could not control. From Sweden to Southern California, citizens grew suspicious of their newly ineffective governments and rebelled against the high taxes needed to support social welfare programs enacted when coffers were flush. Almost everywhere, the pendulum swung to the right, bringing politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to power. But their promise that deregulation, privatization, lower tax rates, and smaller government would restore economic security and robust growth proved unfounded. Although the guiding hand of the state could no longer deliver the steady economic performance the public had come to expect, free-market policies were equally unable to do so. The golden age would not come back again. A sweeping reappraisal of the last sixty years of world history, An Extraordinary Time forces us to come to terms with how little control we actually have over the economy.