Slouching Towards Utopia
An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
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Narrated by:
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Allan Aquino
About this listen
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 direction.
©2022 J. Bradford DeLong (P)2022 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Brad DeLong learnedly and grippingly tells the story of how all the economic growth since 1870 has created a global economy that today satisfies no one’s ideas of fairness. The long journey toward economic justice and more equal rights and opportunities for all shall and will continue.”—Thomas Piketty, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century
“What a joy to finally have Brad DeLong’s masterful interpretation of twentieth-century economic history down on paper. Slouching Towards Utopia is engaging, important, and awe-inspiring in its breadth and creativity.”—Christina Romer, University of California, Berkeley
“History provides the only data we have for charting a course forward in these turbulent times. I have not seen a more revealing and illuminating book about economics and what it means in a very long time. Slouching Towards Utopia should be required reading for anybody who cares about the future of the global system, and that should be everyone.”—Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University
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- By: John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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A must read for everyone wondering whats going?
- By Truth-be-told on 03-30-15
By: John Micklethwait, and others
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And the Weak Suffer What They Must?
- Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future
- By: Yanis Varoufakis
- Narrated by: Yanis Varoufakis, Leighton Pugh
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In January 2015, Yanis Varoufakis, an economics professor teaching in Austin, Texas, was elected to the Greek parliament with more votes than any other member of parliament. He was appointed finance minister, and, in the whirlwind five months that followed, everything he had warned about was confirmed as the "troika" (the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Commission) stonewalled his efforts to resolve Greece's economic crisis.
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interesting perspective
- By Jamila on 07-12-20
By: Yanis Varoufakis
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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
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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.
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Cursory, unoriginal, class-blind
- By A Reviewer on 10-24-22
By: Gary Gerstle
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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
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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.
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Informative and engaging
- By Christopher P Pratt on 02-28-21
By: Clyde Prestowitz
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Why Save the Bankers?
- And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis
- By: Thomas Piketty, Seth Ackerman - translator
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Thomas Piketty's work has proved that unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. Without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands. Armed with this knowledge, democratic societies face a defining challenge: fending off a new aristocracy. For years Piketty has wrestled with this problem in his monthly newspaper column, which pierces the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath.
By: Thomas Piketty, and others
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Red Flags
- Why Xi's China Is in Jeopardy
- By: George Magnus
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past four decades, China's remarkable transformation has garnered admiration but also sparked concern. George Magnus draws on his intimate knowledge of this dynamic nation to uncover the origins of its ascent and show why the economic traps it faces at home and the political challenges it faces abroad pose a serious threat to its continued rise.
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A pessimistic vision with western liberal bias
- By Jeronimo L. Jimenez on 10-23-20
By: George Magnus
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Putinomics
- Money and Power in Resurgent Russia
- By: Chris Miller
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In Putinomics, Chris Miller examines the making of Russian economic policy since Vladimir Putin took power in 1999. Miller argues that Putin's economic strategy has functioned far more effectively than most Westerners realize. While acknowledging that part of Putin's successes - above all, quadrupling per capita GDP in just a decade and a half - can be attributed to cashing in on high oil prices, Miller details the government policies that have also been fundamental to Russia's growth.
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Go find something better
- By Anonymous User on 08-04-21
By: Chris Miller
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Globalization and Its Discontents
- By: Joseph E. Stiglitz
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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This powerful, unsettling book gives us a rare glimpse behind the closed doors of global financial institutions by the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. When it was first published, this national best-seller quickly became a touchstone in the globalization debate. Renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz had a ringside seat for most of the major economic events of the last decade, including stints as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economist at the World Bank.
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Plea
- By Asma on 10-13-20
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Every Nation for Itself
- Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World
- By: Ian Bremmer
- Narrated by: Willis Sparks
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Forget the G-7 and the G-20; we are entering a leaderless "G- Zero" era- with profound implications for every country and corporation. The world power structure is facing a vacuum at the top. With the unifying urgency of the financial crisis behind us, the diverse political and economic values of the G-20 are curtailing the world's most powerful governments' ability to mediate growing global challenges. There is no viable alternative group to take its place.
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Well articulated and thought provoking
- By Mark on 08-09-12
By: Ian Bremmer
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How Asia Works
- Success and Failure in the World's Most Dynamic Region
- By: Joe Studwell
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In How Asia Works, Joe Studwell distills extensive research into the economics of nine countries - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and China - into an accessible narrative that debunks Western misconceptions, shows what really happened in Asia and why, and for once makes clear why some countries have boomed while others have languished.
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The best economic development book I’ve ever seen
- By Jay on 02-17-20
By: Joe Studwell
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The White Man's Burden
- Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
- By: William Easterly
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired by his then-employer, the World Bank. The White Man's Burden is his widely anticipated counterpunch - a brilliant and blistering indictment of the West's economic policies for the world's poor.
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A Bit Repetitive
- By Amazon Customer on 04-27-19
By: William Easterly
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Consider the $20 bill. It has no more value, as a simple slip of paper, than Monopoly money. Yet even children recognize that tearing one into small pieces is an act of inconceivable stupidity. What makes a $20 bill actually worth $20? In the third volume of his best-selling Naked series, Charles Wheelan uses this seemingly simple question to open the door to the surprisingly colorful world of money and banking.
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This is a beautiful audiobook, and well-narrated.
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What listeners say about Slouching Towards Utopia
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-29-24
Long, sweeping anti-capitalism opinion piece without sourcing or a coherent structure
Some interesting facts along the way but mostly a rambling endorsement of social democracy incl the New Deal (didn’t go far enough), western European style redistribution (no mention of growth), and even China’s artificial stimulus to maintain full employment during the Great Recession. Praising Polanyi and Keynes, everyone else (Mill, Hayek, Murray, Sowell, Gilder) is “right wing” to DeLong.
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- Owen Davis
- 10-08-22
Take a tour of Brad DeLong’s mind palace
If you already follow Brad DeLong’s work, you have some idea of what you’re getting into. If you don’t, know that he is a quirky and original thinker and a bit of an eccentric. Not easy to pin down intellectually, though solidly a liberal (in both senses of the term). The book is good as history, though not great. Where it excels is in conveying the author’s singular way of organizing vast quantities of information. DeLong has a handful of heuristics he uses to interpret the world, and this book is largely an exercise in self consciously deploying those heuristics at world historical scale. It certainly has an effect on the way I think about pre-modern societies and subsistence level poverty, and what it meant for humanity to escape “the Malthusian trap.”
The weakest points — and some of the strongest points — occur during DeLong’s occasional tangents. Sometimes you get wonderful little biographical anecdotes of historical figures that delight and enlighten. Other times you get excessively detailed extensive descriptions of battlefield strategy that have seemingly no connection to the big (economic) ideas that undergird the book. These flaws are excusable though. This will probably be regarded as a classic in decades to come.
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- Stevon
- 11-19-22
what is utopia
First time author for me. Since the author is a professor it's no surprise this book reads like a textbook. The takes a look at the world from 1870 to 2010 and ties together all the different things going on in the world and points out why the world can hardly get out of its own way in making live better for the multitudes, which is his definition of utopia.
The author believes and communicates that the challenge of the world, countries, leaders, economics, etc goal should be to make the world a livable place for all, enough food, shelter and opportunity to that everyone has a decent life. He pulls together many of the historical happenings of this time and writes how it all moves forward for the most part but with many steps backwards along the way.
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- Robert Ziegler
- 04-09-23
Excellent
This is the best book about the 20th century political economy I have ever read, or listened to. It is complete, insightful, and ties things together in a way I had not considered before.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Linds
- 05-01-24
Advanced high school economics and history
Good not great but that is relative to ones existing knowledge going into
Recommend it for sure
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- dasquick
- 10-18-22
oversimplified
author uses way too many generalizations to be useful. uses oversimplified history to support thesis.
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- Jennifer McCullough
- 06-28-23
Well done
The book delivers a well connected history with supporting facts and interpretation. The Narrator had the perfect delivery. The assessment of the world economic path is listenable for anyone regardless of their knowledge of economic theory.
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- Christopher Francese
- 11-18-22
The big picture of political economy expertly drawn
Superbly well-informed grand narrative that tackles some big questions, like why is the global south poorer than the global north, what are the sources of economic growth, why did so much prosperity emerge after 1870 and why did the world throw so much of it away in the world wars? What’s the best way to manage a modern economy? And many more. His approach is broadly center left, but he grinds no axes and hews to no political line. He’s very critical of both Reagan’s neoliberalism and Obama’s response to the 2008 crisis, for example. I guess Keynes is his hero. But he gives every major school of thought it’s due. He believes not in ideology or historical necessity but in contingency and the influence of key thinkers and decision makers. An exciting story that makes you hope our leaders will read it and can figure out the keys to general prosperity in the future.
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- Ricardo Ernst
- 01-01-23
Great economic review of where we are …
The books does a fantastic job taking the reader through the economic (and political) evolution of how we got here with an objective and analytical perspective.
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- David Worley
- 02-03-23
Will become dominant history of 20th C economics
Great book, a masterpiece. A must read for anyone interested in economic history. DeLong compelling details the macro forces that shaped the century.
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