Crack-Up Capitalism
Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $18.88
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Keith Sellon-Wright
-
By:
-
Quinn Slobodian
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
Look at a map of the world and you'll see a neat patchwork of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. From the 1990s onwards, globalization has shattered the map, leading to an explosion of new legal entities: tax havens, free ports, city-states, gated enclaves and special economic zones. These new spaces are freed from ordinary forms of regulation, taxation and mutual obligation—and with them, ultracapitalists believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government and oversight altogether.
Historian Quinn Slobodian follows the most notorious radical libertarians—from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel—around the globe as they search for the perfect home for their free market fantasy. The hunt leads from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the medieval City of London, and finally into the world's oceans and war zones, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where capitalism and democracy can be finally uncoupled.
Crack-Up Capitalism is a propulsive history of the recent past, and an alarming view of our near future.
©2023 Quinn Slobodian (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
- America and the World in the Free Market Era
- By: Gary Gerstle
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades.
-
-
Cursory, unoriginal, class-blind
- By A Reviewer on 10-24-22
By: Gary Gerstle
-
Globalists
- The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
- By: Quinn Slobodian
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, author Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level.
-
-
Tracing Neoliberalism to Its European Origins
- By Will Szal on 06-25-19
By: Quinn Slobodian
-
The Big Myth
- How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
- By: Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
- Narrated by: Liza Seneca
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with 'big government' and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor.
-
-
Refuting the Chicago School
- By Todd W. Laveen on 06-01-23
By: Naomi Oreskes, and others
-
Palo Alto
- A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
- By: Malcolm Harris
- Narrated by: Patrick Harrison
- Length: 28 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In PALO ALTO, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the "tragedy of the commons," racial genetics, and "broken windows" theory.
-
-
Yes, it's Marxist. it's also good.
- By Alex halladay on 02-15-23
By: Malcolm Harris
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
If We Burn
- The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
- By: Vincent Bevins
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. IF WE BURN is a stirring work of history built around a single, vital question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?
-
-
The final word on horizontalism on the left
- By Patrick Foote on 02-25-24
By: Vincent Bevins
-
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
- America and the World in the Free Market Era
- By: Gary Gerstle
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades.
-
-
Cursory, unoriginal, class-blind
- By A Reviewer on 10-24-22
By: Gary Gerstle
-
Globalists
- The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
- By: Quinn Slobodian
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, author Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level.
-
-
Tracing Neoliberalism to Its European Origins
- By Will Szal on 06-25-19
By: Quinn Slobodian
-
The Big Myth
- How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
- By: Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
- Narrated by: Liza Seneca
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with 'big government' and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor.
-
-
Refuting the Chicago School
- By Todd W. Laveen on 06-01-23
By: Naomi Oreskes, and others
-
Palo Alto
- A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
- By: Malcolm Harris
- Narrated by: Patrick Harrison
- Length: 28 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In PALO ALTO, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the "tragedy of the commons," racial genetics, and "broken windows" theory.
-
-
Yes, it's Marxist. it's also good.
- By Alex halladay on 02-15-23
By: Malcolm Harris
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
If We Burn
- The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
- By: Vincent Bevins
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. IF WE BURN is a stirring work of history built around a single, vital question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?
-
-
The final word on horizontalism on the left
- By Patrick Foote on 02-25-24
By: Vincent Bevins
-
The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
-
-
I'm just not feeling this one....
- By J. Richmond on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
-
Poverty, by America
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
-
-
A testimonial based on facts and witness
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-27-23
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Birchers
- How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right
- By: Matthew Dallek
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the height of the John Birch Society’s activity in the 1960s, critics dismissed its members as a paranoid fringe. After all, “Birchers” believed that a vast communist conspiracy existed in America and posed an existential threat to Christianity, capitalism, and freedom. But as historian Matthew Dallek reveals, the Birch Society’s extremism remade American conservatism. Most Birchers were white professionals who were radicalized as growing calls for racial and gender equality appeared to upend American life.
-
-
Do not recommend
- By Michael F. on 05-21-23
By: Matthew Dallek
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
- By: Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?
-
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- By orders on 10-07-23
By: Steven Levitsky, and others
-
The Times
- How the Newspaper of Record Survived Scandal, Scorn, and the Transformation of Journalism
- By: Adam Nagourney
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over a century, The New York Times has been an iconic institution in American journalism, one whose history is intertwined with the events that it chronicles—a newspaper read by millions of people every day to stay informed about events that have taken place across the globe. In The Times, Adam Nagourney, who’s worked at The New York Times since 1996, examines four decades of the newspaper’s history, from the final years of Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger’s reign as publisher to the election of Donald Trump in November 2016.
-
-
Excellent, enormously insightful!
- By Larry Kaufman on 10-31-23
By: Adam Nagourney
-
Humanly Possible
- Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Humanism is an expansive tradition of thought that places shared humanity, cultural vibrancy, and moral responsibility at the center of our lives. For centuries, this worldview has inspired people to make their choices by principles of freethinking, intellectual inquiry, fellow feeling, and optimism. In this sweeping new history, Sarah Bakewell, herself a lifelong humanist, illuminates the very personal, individual, and, well, human matter of humanism and takes listeners on a grand intellectual adventure.
-
-
A glimmer of hope
- By RAY MONTECALVO on 04-14-23
By: Sarah Bakewell
-
The Big Con
- How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies
- By: Mariana Mazzucato, Rosie Collington
- Narrated by: Amy Finegan
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and the way business and government are managed today that must change. Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies’ reliance on companies such as McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability, and impedes our collective mission of halting climate breakdown. Mazzucato and Collington argue for building a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good.
-
-
Cohesive argument with actionable insights.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-28-24
By: Mariana Mazzucato, and others
-
Slouching Towards Utopia
- An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
- By: J. Bradford DeLong
- Narrated by: Allan Aquino
- Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
A clear but sometimes one-sided economic history
- By Anon on 11-22-22
-
Underground Empire
- How America Weaponized the World Economy
- By: Henry Farrell, Abraham Newman
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply researched investigation that reveals how the United States is like a spider at the heart of an international web of surveillance and control, which it weaves in the form of globe-spanning networks such as fiber optic cables and obscure payment systems.
-
-
Fantastic, Relevant, and Important.
- By Amazon Customer on 10-29-23
By: Henry Farrell, and others
-
The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
- By: Martin Wolf
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Martin Wolf has long been one of the wisest voices on global economic issues. He has rarely been called an optimist, yet he has never been as worried as he is today. Liberal democracy is in recession, and authoritarianism is on the rise. The ties that ought to bind open markets to free and fair elections are threatened, even in democracy’s heartlands, the United States and England.
-
-
Rambling and muddled.
- By Daniel Mccarty on 02-20-23
By: Martin Wolf
-
How China Escaped Shock Therapy
- The Market Reform Debate
- By: Isabella M. Weber
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China's path.
-
-
an immense and delicate work
- By Heitor Faro de Castro on 08-26-23
-
End Times
- Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
- By: Peter Turchin
- Narrated by: Robin McAlpine
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.
-
-
Boomer History
- By Kevin on 08-12-23
By: Peter Turchin
Critic reviews
"Ranging from Liechtenstein to Somalia, and from Hong Kong to Silicon Valley, Quinn Slobodian's Crack-Up Capitalism exposes how zones of exception promise capitalism an escape from the confines of the modern state and the constraints of democracy. Revelatory reading. A worthy successor to Slobodian's brilliant Globalists." (Adam Tooze, author of Crashed)
"Excellent... A new generation of swashbuckling billionaires entertain the prospect of secession, using their money to realize fantasies of escape, whether through seasteading or spaceships." (Jennifer Szalai)
"Slobodian has written a fascinating account of the sheer hubris of the market radicals who have sought to free capitalism from democracy first by transforming the world's political geography and now by abandoning the material world. He tells this important story with verve and considerable insight." (Helen Thompson)
Related to this topic
-
Fantasy Island
- Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico
- By: Ed Morales
- Narrated by: Sean Duffy
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Fantasy Island, Ed Morales traces how, over the years, Puerto Rico has served as a colonial satellite, a Cold War Caribbean showcase, a dumping ground for US manufactured goods, and a corporate tax shelter. He also shows how it has become a blank canvas for mercenary experiments in disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change, hamstrung by internal political corruption and the US federal government's prioritization of outside financial interests.
-
-
Gringo Narrattion
- By shakira julia on 02-08-21
By: Ed Morales
-
The World Turned Upside Down
- America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership
- By: Clyde Prestowitz
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, most experts expected the WTO rules and procedures would liberalize China and make it "a responsible stakeholder in the liberal world order". But the experts made the wrong bet. China today is liberalizing neither economically nor politically but, if anything, becoming more authoritarian and mercantilist. In this book, renowned globalization and Asia expert Clyde Prestowitz describes the key challenges posed by China and the strategies America and the Free World must adopt to meet them.
-
-
Informative and engaging
- By Christopher P Pratt on 02-28-21
By: Clyde Prestowitz
-
The Age of Acquiescence
- The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power
- By: Steve Fraser
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? The Age of Acquiescence seeks to solve that mystery.
-
-
Excellent
- By Brad on 05-03-15
By: Steve Fraser
-
Brazil
- The Troubled Rise of a Global Power
- By: Michael Reid
- Narrated by: Michael Healy
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experts believe that Brazil, the world's fifth largest country and its seventh largest economy, will be one of the most important global powers by the year 2030. Yet far more attention has been paid to the other rising behemoths: Russia, India, and China. Often ignored and underappreciated, Brazil, according to renowned, award-winning journalist Michael Reid, has finally begun to live up to its potential but faces important challenges before it becomes a nation of substantial global significance.
-
-
Good short history of Brazil, lame pronunciation
- By Bubu Mungani on 07-21-19
By: Michael Reid
-
The Party
- The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
- By: Richard McGregor
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Party is Financial Times reporter Richard McGregor's eye-opening investigation into China's Communist Party, and the integral role it has played in the country's rise as a global superpower and rival to the United States. Many books have examined China's economic rise, human rights record, turbulent history, and relations with the US; none until now, however, have tackled the issue central to understanding all of these issues: how the ruling communist government works. The Party delves deeply into China's secretive political machine.
-
-
The content is good but the narrator is terrible
- By Kit on 02-24-20
By: Richard McGregor
-
Revolt
- The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization
- By: Nadav Eyal
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Revolt is an eloquent and provocative challenge to the prevailing wisdom about the rise of nationalism and populism. With a vibrant and informed voice, Nadav Eyal illustrates how modern globalization is not sustainable. He contends that the collapse of the current world order is not so much about the imbalance between technological achievement and social progress or the breakdown of liberal democracy as it is about a passion to upend and destroy power structures that have become hollow, corrupt, or simply unresponsive to urgent needs.
-
-
Good observations, very politically biased.
- By P. Bradley on 11-29-23
By: Nadav Eyal
-
Fantasy Island
- Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico
- By: Ed Morales
- Narrated by: Sean Duffy
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Fantasy Island, Ed Morales traces how, over the years, Puerto Rico has served as a colonial satellite, a Cold War Caribbean showcase, a dumping ground for US manufactured goods, and a corporate tax shelter. He also shows how it has become a blank canvas for mercenary experiments in disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change, hamstrung by internal political corruption and the US federal government's prioritization of outside financial interests.
-
-
Gringo Narrattion
- By shakira julia on 02-08-21
By: Ed Morales
-
The World Turned Upside Down
- America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership
- By: Clyde Prestowitz
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, most experts expected the WTO rules and procedures would liberalize China and make it "a responsible stakeholder in the liberal world order". But the experts made the wrong bet. China today is liberalizing neither economically nor politically but, if anything, becoming more authoritarian and mercantilist. In this book, renowned globalization and Asia expert Clyde Prestowitz describes the key challenges posed by China and the strategies America and the Free World must adopt to meet them.
-
-
Informative and engaging
- By Christopher P Pratt on 02-28-21
By: Clyde Prestowitz
-
The Age of Acquiescence
- The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power
- By: Steve Fraser
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the American Revolution through the Civil Rights movement, Americans have long mobilized against political, social, and economic privilege. Hierarchies based on inheritance, wealth, and political preferment were treated as obnoxious and a threat to democracy. Mass movements envisioned a new world supplanting dog-eat-dog capitalism. But over the last half-century that political will and cultural imagination have vanished. Why? The Age of Acquiescence seeks to solve that mystery.
-
-
Excellent
- By Brad on 05-03-15
By: Steve Fraser
-
Brazil
- The Troubled Rise of a Global Power
- By: Michael Reid
- Narrated by: Michael Healy
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experts believe that Brazil, the world's fifth largest country and its seventh largest economy, will be one of the most important global powers by the year 2030. Yet far more attention has been paid to the other rising behemoths: Russia, India, and China. Often ignored and underappreciated, Brazil, according to renowned, award-winning journalist Michael Reid, has finally begun to live up to its potential but faces important challenges before it becomes a nation of substantial global significance.
-
-
Good short history of Brazil, lame pronunciation
- By Bubu Mungani on 07-21-19
By: Michael Reid
-
The Party
- The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
- By: Richard McGregor
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Party is Financial Times reporter Richard McGregor's eye-opening investigation into China's Communist Party, and the integral role it has played in the country's rise as a global superpower and rival to the United States. Many books have examined China's economic rise, human rights record, turbulent history, and relations with the US; none until now, however, have tackled the issue central to understanding all of these issues: how the ruling communist government works. The Party delves deeply into China's secretive political machine.
-
-
The content is good but the narrator is terrible
- By Kit on 02-24-20
By: Richard McGregor
-
Revolt
- The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization
- By: Nadav Eyal
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Revolt is an eloquent and provocative challenge to the prevailing wisdom about the rise of nationalism and populism. With a vibrant and informed voice, Nadav Eyal illustrates how modern globalization is not sustainable. He contends that the collapse of the current world order is not so much about the imbalance between technological achievement and social progress or the breakdown of liberal democracy as it is about a passion to upend and destroy power structures that have become hollow, corrupt, or simply unresponsive to urgent needs.
-
-
Good observations, very politically biased.
- By P. Bradley on 11-29-23
By: Nadav Eyal
-
Forgotten Continent
- The Battle for Latin America’s Soul
- By: Michael Reid
- Narrated by: Gary Dikeos
- Length: 18 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Latin America has often been condemned to failure. Neither poor enough to evoke Africa’s moral crusade nor as explosively booming as India and China, it has largely been overlooked by the West. Yet this vast continent, home to half a billion people, the world’s largest reserves of arable land, and 8.5 percent of global oil, is busily transforming its political and economic landscape.
-
-
Good Reporting / Disorganized Content
- By Steven Schuster on 02-11-12
By: Michael Reid
-
The Post-American World 2.0
- By: Fareed Zakaria
- Narrated by: Fareed Zakaria
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the New York Times and international best seller, revised and expanded with a new afterword. This is the essential update of Fareed Zakaria's analysis about America and its shifting position in world affairs. In this new edition, Zakaria makes sense of the rapidly changing global landscape. With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, he draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past 500 years - the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States - to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the rise of the rest.
-
-
S/B req reading for every man, woman and child...
- By Kopernicus on 10-20-11
By: Fareed Zakaria
-
On Corruption in America
- And What Is at Stake
- By: Sarah Chayes
- Narrated by: Sarah Chayes
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this unflinching exploration of corruption in America, Chayes exposes how corruption has thrived within our borders - from the titans of America's Gilded Age (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, et al.) to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression, and FDR's New Deal; from Joe Kennedy's years of banking, bootlegging, machine politics, and pursuit of infinite wealth to the deregulation of the Reagan Revolution - undermining this nation's proud middle class and union members.
-
-
Profoundly ambitious and genuine yet...
- By Jerry A. Boriskin on 08-16-20
By: Sarah Chayes
-
Inside Money
- Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power
- By: Zachary Karabell
- Narrated by: Zachary Karabell
- Length: 17 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Inside Money, acclaimed historian, commentator, and former financial executive Zachary Karabell offers the first full and frank look inside this institution against the backdrop of American history. Blessed with complete access to the company's archives, as well as a thrilling understanding of the larger forces at play, Karabell has created an X-ray of American power - financial, political, cultural - as it has evolved from the early 1800s to the present.
-
-
Brilliant, well researched & highly insightful
- By Mongezi on 02-11-22
By: Zachary Karabell
-
The Future Is Asian
- Commerce, Conflict and Culture in the 21st Century
- By: Parag Khanna
- Narrated by: Nezar Alderazi
- Length: 14 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 19th century, the world was Europeanized. In the 20th century, it was Americanized. Now, in the 21st century, the world is being Asianized. The “Asian Century” is even bigger than you think. Far greater than just China, the new Asian system taking shape is a multicivilizational order spanning Saudi Arabia to Japan, Russia to Australia, Turkey to Indonesia - linking five billion people through trade, finance, infrastructure, and diplomatic networks that together represent 40 percent of global GDP.
-
-
Bigoted, jingoistic, ethnocentric
- By SEAN on 03-08-19
By: Parag Khanna
-
The Mystery of Capital
- Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
- By: Hernando de Soto
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph," writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up one of the most pressing questions the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail?
-
-
Good global perspective on Capitalism
- By Nellie boi on 05-29-21
By: Hernando de Soto
-
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
- America and the World in the Free Market Era
- By: Gary Gerstle
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades.
-
-
Cursory, unoriginal, class-blind
- By A Reviewer on 10-24-22
By: Gary Gerstle
-
In the Dragon's Shadow
- Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century
- By: Sebastian Strangio
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A timely look at the impact of China's booming emergence on the countries of Southeast Asia.
-
-
Great book
- By Alex Noble on 12-13-20
-
Socialism 101
- From the Bolsheviks and Karl Marx to Universal Healthcare and the Democratic Socialists, Everything You Need to Know About Socialism
- By: Kathleen Sears
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In today’s political climate, more and more presidential candidates are espousing socialist - or democratic socialist - policies. Once associated with oppression, socialism is now a current topic of conversation with everyday Americans, including policies like taxing the rich and healthcare for all. But what exactly is socialism and why does it spark such an intense debate? Socialism 101 provides an easy-to-understand, unbiased overview to the nearly 300-year-old origins of this mode of government, its complex history, basic constructs, and modern-day interpretations....
-
-
Teeth
- By Ein on 03-05-20
By: Kathleen Sears
-
The End of Power
- From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be
- By: Moises Naim
- Narrated by: Matt Kugler
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The End of Power, award-winning columnist and former Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím illuminates the struggle between once-dominant megaplayers and the new micropowers challenging them in every field of human endeavor. Drawing on provocative, original research and a lifetime of experience in global affairs, Naím explains how the end of power is reconfiguring our world.
-
-
Another Power book
- By Anonymous User on 04-12-24
By: Moises Naim
-
The Fourth Revolution
- The Global Race to Reinvent the State
- By: John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling authors of The Right Nation, a visionary argument that our current crisis in government is nothing less than the fourth radical transition in the history of the nation-state. Dysfunctional government: It' s become a cliché, and most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a seriously limited view of things. In fact, there have been three great revolutions in government in the history of the modern world.
-
-
A must read for everyone wondering whats going?
- By Truth-be-told on 03-30-15
By: John Micklethwait, and others
-
A Brief History of the Future
- A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-first Century
- By: Jacques Attali
- Narrated by: Alan Robertson
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What will planet Earth be like in 20 years? At mid-century? In the year 2100? Prescient and convincing, this book is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future. Never has the world offered more promise for the future and been more fraught with dangers. In this powerful and sometimes terrifying work, Attali analyzes the past and pinpoints nine distinct periods of human history, each with its world center of power and prestige, and predicts what the tenth will bring by the end of this century.
-
-
feels like a popular mechanics article
- By Robin on 07-11-17
By: Jacques Attali