A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller • An NPR Best Book of the Year
The New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent masterfully reveals how billionaires’ systematic plunder of the world—brazenly accelerated during the pandemic—has transformed 21st-century life and dangerously destabilized democracy.
“Davos Man will be read a hundred years from now as a warning.” —Evan Osnos
“Excellent. A powerful, fiery book, and it could well be an essential one.” —NPR.org
The history of the last half century in America, Europe, and other major economies is in large part the story of wealth flowing upward. The most affluent people emerged from capitalism’s triumph in the Cold War to loot the peace, depriving governments of the resources needed to serve their people, and leaving them tragically unprepared for the worst pandemic in a century.
Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative “Davos Men”—members of the billionaire class—chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man’s wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more.
Goodman’s revelatory exposé of the global billionaire class reveals their hidden impact on nearly every aspect of modern society: widening wealth inequality, the rise of anti-democratic nationalism, the shrinking opportunity to earn a livable wage, the vulnerabilities of our health-care systems, access to affordable housing, unequal taxation, and even the quality of the shirt on your back. Meticulously reported yet compulsively readable, Davos Man is an essential read for anyone concerned about economic justice, the capacity of societies to grapple with their greatest challenges, and the sanctity of representative government.
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"A biting, uproarious yet vital and deadly serious account…Goodman guides the reader through the hidden stories and twisted beliefs of some of the titans of finance and industry, who continually rationalize their bad behavior to themselves."
— Joseph E. Stiglitz, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics
“A passionate denunciation of the mega-rich.”
— The Economist (London)“An angry, powerful look at the economic inequality that’s been brought into sharp relief by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
— NPR“Shows us that today’s extreme wealth is inextricably linked to a great crime, perhaps the greatest one of this century: the hijacking of our democracy.”
— Washington Post“Goodman is a skilled reporter whose stories of private affluence and public squalor are filled with detail and human interest.”
— Wall Street JournalBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Peter S. Goodman is the author of three books, including Davos Man and Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy. He is the global economics correspondent for the New York Times. He was previously the New York Times’ European economics correspondent based in London, and the national economics correspondent based in New York, where he played a leading role in the paper’s award-winning coverage of the Great Recession, including a series that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Previously, he covered the Internet bubble and bust as the Washington Post’s telecommunications reporter and served as its China-based Asian economics correspondent. He graduated from Reed College and completed a master’s in Vietnamese history from the University of California, Berkeley.
Michael David Axtell is a voice talent and audiobook narrator.