Why read Slouching Toward Utopia?

Book cover of Slouching Toward Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Slouching Toward Utopia as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jonathan B. Baker

Author

This is a wide-ranging, thought-provoking, accessible, informed, lively, and convincing economic history of the “long” 20th century (1870 to 2010).

Among its many narratives, the book shows how “thirty glorious years of social democracy” ended around 1975 when the U.S. and other economies in the global north took “the neoliberal turn” in favor of relying more on the market to organize society.

That history is essential context for understanding why the U.S. Supreme Court, beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s, relaxed the “structural era” antitrust rules in place since the 1940s, which had emphasized skepticism about growing concentration and…

From Jonathan's list on reads before—or after—you learn antitrust law.