Economics
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Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
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.
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.
Editorial Reviews
"A magisterial history…asks the right questions and teaches us a lot of crucial history along the way." ―Paul Krugman
"I've been waiting for Brad [DeLong]'s big economic history opus for a long time now." ―Ezra Klein
"An unmissable book … The strength of the book-as well as its immense scope and depth … is that it's a work of political economy, braiding the different strands of ideas, Hayek, Polanyi and Keynes … Definitely one to read."―Diane Coyle
"This is a brilliant and important book. It offers an original and penetrating analysis of what its author calls ‘the long twentieth century,' the period of unprecedented economic advance that began roughly in 1870 and ended, he asserts, in 2010. Material abundance poured upon humanity. Previous generations would have thought such wealth to be a guarantee of utopia. Yet the age of material progress has ended not in a utopia, but in recrimination and discord. No book has explained the successes and failures of this extraordinary period with comparable insight."―Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times
"One of the most ambitious and admirable economic history books of the year...DeLong is a guide whose conclusions I cannot fault." ―Strategy + Business
"The author conveys a wealth of information in elegant, accessible prose, combining grand, epochal perspectives with fascinating discursions on everything from alternating-current electricity to the gender wage gap. The result is a cogent interpretation of economic modernity that illuminates both its nigh-miraculous achievements and its seething discontents."―Publishers Weekly, starred review
"[T]he author ably anatomizes his subject with admirable clarity, offering accessible and illuminating explanations of key historical shifts and the socio-economic forces driving them… A sprawling but carefully argued, edifying account of modern economic history and its impact on global well-being." ―Kirkus 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 Time...
"I've been waiting for Brad [DeLong]'s big economic history opus for a long time now." ―Ezra Klein
"An unmissable book … The strength of the book-as well as its immense scope and depth … is that it's a work of political economy, braiding the different strands of ideas, Hayek, Polanyi and Keynes … Definitely one to read."―Diane Coyle
"This is a brilliant and important book. It offers an original and penetrating analysis of what its author calls ‘the long twentieth century,' the period of unprecedented economic advance that began roughly in 1870 and ended, he asserts, in 2010. Material abundance poured upon humanity. Previous generations would have thought such wealth to be a guarantee of utopia. Yet the age of material progress has ended not in a utopia, but in recrimination and discord. No book has explained the successes and failures of this extraordinary period with comparable insight."―Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times
"One of the most ambitious and admirable economic history books of the year...DeLong is a guide whose conclusions I cannot fault." ―Strategy + Business
"The author conveys a wealth of information in elegant, accessible prose, combining grand, epochal perspectives with fascinating discursions on everything from alternating-current electricity to the gender wage gap. The result is a cogent interpretation of economic modernity that illuminates both its nigh-miraculous achievements and its seething discontents."―Publishers Weekly, starred review
"[T]he author ably anatomizes his subject with admirable clarity, offering accessible and illuminating explanations of key historical shifts and the socio-economic forces driving them… A sprawling but carefully argued, edifying account of modern economic history and its impact on global well-being." ―Kirkus 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 Time...
Readers Top Reviews
Charles TipsStephen
Economics was one of my beats as an academic editor a few decades back, I quickly learned the bias in economics: If the authors of free enterprise going back a quarter of a century, Adam Smith and J. B. Say, were correct, then those actually taking the risks call the shots and not economists. However, if British Fabian Lord Keynes, who came to prominence only a century ago is correct, then economists in government, think tanks and academe become indispensable to setting policy. Look at the laudatory reviews above, and you will see who I am talking about. It has been challenging to keep Keynes looking respectable. I believe we are looking at version 3.0 now of rehabilitating his wrongheadedness. Meanwhile, Smith and Say, such ivory tower calumny apart, have held up well. But to read DeLong's "Slouching Towards Utopia," you would think it is not even a close call. There is no mention of Keynes' frauds and blunders at the Genoa Conference to put the world back on the gold standard after World War I that led directly to the Great Depression. There is no mention of the "Roosevelt Recession," the third depression of the Great Depression that came as FDR tried to implement industrial policy after receiving his gift copy of Keynes' "The General Theory." There is no mention of the body of academic work that claims Roosevelt needlessly prolonged the Great Depression by at least seven years. There is no mention that FDR's New Deal consisted almost entirely of programs Hoover already had in place--just the opposite. There is certainly no mention that Woodrow Wilson was widely credited in Europe as having provided the proof of concept for fascist dirigisme by his takeover of American industry in the first world war. In short, I do not buy and read academic economics expecting it to be free of slant, but this book stands as pure snow job with not a nod I could find to any degree of objectivity.
