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A Brief History of Equality Audiobook
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The world’s leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding, a perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books.
It is easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the grand sweep of history gives us reasons to be optimistic. Over the centuries, he shows, we have been moving toward greater equality.
Piketty guides us with elegance and concision through the great movements that have made the modern world for better and worse: the growth of capitalism, revolutions, imperialism, slavery, wars, and the building of the welfare state. It’s a history of violence and social struggle, punctuated by regression and disaster. But through it all, Piketty shows, human societies have moved fitfully toward a more just distribution of income and assets, a reduction of racial and gender inequalities, and greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship.
Our rough march forward is political and ideological, an endless fight against injustice. To keep moving, Piketty argues, we need to learn and commit to what works, to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality. At the same time, we need to resist historical amnesia and the temptations of cultural separatism and intellectual compartmentalization. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people.
We know we can do better, Piketty concludes. The past shows us how. The future is up to us.
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“[Piketty] possesses the rarest of abilities to analyze staggering quantities of information and offer original insights into the structures that underpin our economies…This elegant and short book will allow any reader to understand the glory.”
— Irish Times (Dublin)
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“An activist’s history, part reckoning with the past and part manifesto for the future, designed to bolster the courage of those who would continue the forward march.”
— Literary Review -
“For Piketty, the arc of history is long, but it does bend toward equality. There is nothing automatic about it, however: as citizens, we must be ready to fight for it…This book is here to help.”
— Esther Duflo, Nobel Laureate in economic sciences -
“[An] exceptional book…Piketty makes past progress into a call to continue the struggle for justice.”
— Daniel Markovits, author of The Meritocracy Trap -
“A succinct synthesis of the important lessons of his work to date—a valuable resource for all of us trying to build an economy that is driven by value creation for all and not value extraction for the few.”
— Mariana Mazzucato, author of Mission Economy
Awards
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
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A #1 Amazon bestseller
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About Thomas Piketty
Thomas Piketty is a professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the Paris School of Economics and codirector of the World Inequality Lab. His books include the New York Times bestsellers Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Capital and Ideology.
About Fred Sanders
Fred Sanders, an actor and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has received critics’ praise for his audio narrations that range from nonfiction, memoir, and fiction to mystery and suspense. He been seen on Broadway in The Buddy Holly Story, in national tours for Driving Miss Daisy and Big River, and on such television shows as Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs,Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. He is a native New Yorker and Yale graduate.