The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (The Princeton Economic History of the($39.49Value)

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How only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout world history Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world. Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling―mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues―have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future. An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent―and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon. "Shortlisted for the 2017 Cundill History Prize, McGill University" "Shortlisted for the 2017 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award" "strategy+business Best Business Book of 2017 in Economics" "One of The New York Times Deal Book “Business Books Worth Reading” 2017 (chosen by Andrew Sorkin)" "One of The Wall Street Journal’s What Business Leaders Read in 2017" "Selected for The HCSS Bookshelf (chosen by Stephan De Spiegeleire) 2017" "One of BBC History Magazine’s Books of the Year 2017" "One of the Microsoft Best Business Books of 2017" "One of Project Syndicate’s Best Reads in 2017 (chosen by Dambisa Moyo)" "One of the Economist.com “2017 Books of the Year” in Economics and Business" "One of Financial Times (FT.com) Best Books of 2017: Economics, chosen by Martin Wolf" "One of The Wall Street Journal’s What Business Leaders Read in 2017, chosen by Mohamed A. El-Erian" "One of the CNBC 13 Best Business Books of 2017" "One of World’s 2017 Books of the Year in “Understanding the World”" "Medium.com’s Books of the Year 2017, chosen by Mark Koyama" "Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler is a smartly argued book. As you may be able to tell from the title, Mr. Scheidel makes the case that throughout history, inequality has led only to terrible things (think pandemics and wars). For anybody who has ever debated issues related to inequality and their broader meaning, this book provides more than just a powerful thought experiment." ---Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times "Mr. Scheidel's depressing view is bound to upset [those] who quite naturally might prefer to live in a world in which events might move political and social systems to figure out a more equitable way to distribute the fruits of growth without the plague, the guillotine or state collapse." ---Eduardo Porter, New York Times "Sweeping and provocative." ― New Yorker "One by one Scheidel dismisses the non-catastrophic alternatives that have been the focus of virtually every peaceful movement for social justice: democracy, the extension of the franchise, education, economic growth, social democracy, trade unionism and the welfare state. Their effects, he demonstrates, have been comparatively trivial and have never compensated for the inexorable march of inequality." ---J. C. Scott, London Review of Books "An astonishing tour de force." ---Gregory Clark, Wall Street Journal "In [Scheidel's] magisterial sociopolitical history The Great Leveler , inequality is shown as preferable to the alternative: society levelled by vast upheavals." ---Aaron Reeves, Nature "As a supplier of momentary relief, the Great Depression seems an unlikely candidate. . . . Yes, it brought widespread suffering and dreadful misery. But it did not bring death to millions, and in that it stands out. If that counts as relief, you can begin to imagine the scale of the woe that comes before and after. [Scheidel] puts the discussion of increased inequality found in the recent work of Thomas Piketty, Anthony Atkinson, Branko Milanovic and others into a broad historical context and examines the circumstances under which it can be reduced." ― The Economist "Reducing inequality by peaceful means looks harder than ever, giving Mr. Scheidel's arguments even greater resonance." ---Buttonwood, The Economist "A scholarly and ambitious b