scholarly journals Book review of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard Press, 2014, 605 pages

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Paul Dobrescu ◽  
Mălina Ciocea

<em><em></em></em><p>“Every now and then, the field of economics produces an important book; this is one of them” (Cowen, 2014). These are the opening words of Tyler Cowen’s presentation of Thomas Piketty’s work, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (Piketty, 2014), in Foreign Affairs. This is a book that is visibly placed in all important bookstores around the world, widely debated, acclaimed, sold (over 1 million copies have been sold so far). It has been favorably reviewed or quoted in all major journals. The assessment of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Paul Krugman, Nobel Economics Prize Laureate as a “magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality”, is highly relevant: “This is a book that will change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics” (Krugman, 2014). Finally, Piketty’s book is included in the list of the year’s best books by prestigious journals, such as The Economist, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Observer, The Independent, Daily Telegraph; Financial Times and McKinsey have hailed it as the best book of 2014.</p>

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Mann

Thomas Piketty has offered, and many have desperately snatched at, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money of our epoch. Piketty’s affinity with John Maynard Keynes and his groundbreaking 1936 landmark is largely unreflexive. But the ties that bind him to Keynes are powerful, and manifest themselves at many levels in Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The epistemology, the political stance, the methodological commitments, and the politics resonate in imperfect but remarkable harmony. This is no accident, because the world in which Piketty’s book appeared is saturated with the specifically capitalist form of anxiety that Keynes sought to diagnose, and fix, the last time it made the richest economies in the world tremble.


2020 ◽  
pp. 222-236
Author(s):  
Tobias Boes

Goethe’s 1827 aphorism that ‘national literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at hand’ is cited approvingly in virtually every critical study of the ways authors and literature move about in the world. But is it actually true? As Tobias Boes shows in this contribution, the global literature industry remains subdivided along national lines, with publishers’ catalogues, prize competitions, and trade fairs more or less resembling a ‘cultural Olympiad’. Many twenty-first-century authors struggle with this phenomenon of ‘national exemplification’, as Boes calls it, while other writers derive great commercial benefit from hitching their wagon to the destiny of a national community. This chapter explores whether national exemplification will still be the way forward as we progress into the twenty-first century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff ◽  
Øjvind Larsen

Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) has become a bestseller in the world. Two month after its publication, it had sold more than 200.000 copies, and this success will surely continue for a long time. Piketty has established a new platform to discuss political economy.


Author(s):  
Daniel Freeman ◽  
Jason Freeman

Terrorists, child abductors, muggers, delinquent teenagers, malicious colleagues . . . Who wouldnt be worried? The world can be a dangerous place, for sure. But have we lost the knack of judging risk? Are we letting paranoia get the better of us? In this entertaining and thought-provoking book, based on the most up-to-date scientific research, Daniel and Jason Freeman highlight just how prominent paranoia is today. One in four of us have regular paranoid thoughts. The authors analyse the causes of paranoia, identifying the social and cultural factors that seem to be skewing the way we think and feel about the world around us. And they explain why paranoia may be on the rise and, crucially, what we can do to tackle it. Witty, clear, and compelling, Paranoia takes us beyond the tabloid headlines to pinpoint the real menace at the heart of twenty-first century culture.


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