Capital in the Twenty-First Century

By Thomas Piketty

Book Overview

A New York Times #1 Bestseller
A Wall Street Journal #1 Bestseller
A USA Today Bestseller
A Sunday Times Bestseller
A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century
Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Winner of the British Academy Medal
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.

A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067443000X
• ISBN13: 9780674430006
• Release Date: January 2014
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 704 Pages
• Weight: 2.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

I am always a sucker for new ideas on old subjects.

I am surprised that so many people take an interest in this extensive view of "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Tomas Piketty. If I start out repeating or commenting on this approximately 700-page book, the review will end up a 1400-page review. I came to this book after reading hundreds of reviews (some just soapbox rants). Some of the reviews are quite profound. But now it is time to look at the source and not opinions that are other than mine. This capital book is not a book about "Capital" as much as how to keep capital in line with entities such as democracy vs. oligarchy. So, Tomas Piketty puts his foot in it when it comes to people who do not want to hear about this and spend time arguing about methods of taxation and distribution without addressing the actual premise. I think the value of this book is in bringing out old and new information and observations by the author's extrapolation, thus creating a dialogue among readers on the possible futures and whether intervention or insight will have any effect for better or worse.