Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

An instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller from one of the world's leading economists, offering a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, but left us unsatisfied

"A magisterial history."--​Paul Krugman

Named a Best Book of 2022 by Financial Times * Economist * Fast Company

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.

ISBN-13: 9780465019595

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Basic Books

Publication Date: 09-06-2022

Pages: 624

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.20(d)

Age Range: 13 - 18 Years

J. Bradford DeLong, an economic historian, is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Clinton administration. He writes a widely read economics blog, now at braddelong.substack.com. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction: My Grand Narrative 1

1 Globalizing the World 27

2 Revving Up the Engine of Technology-Driven Growth 59

3 Democratizing the Global North 85

4 Global Empires 115

5 World War I 141

6 Roaring Twenties 165

7 The Great Depression 205

8 Really-Existing Socialism 235

9 Fascism and Nazism 259

10 World War II 283

11 The Cold War of Hostile Yet Coexisting Systems 311

12 False (and True) Starts to Economic Development in the Global South 339

13 Inclusion 373

14 Thirty Glorious Years of Social Democracy 395

15 The Neoliberal Turn 427

16 Reglobalizatlon, Information Technology, and Hyperglobalization 461

17 Great Recession and Anemic Recovery 485

Conclusion: Are We Still Slouching Towards Utopia? 519

Acknowledgments 537

Notes 539

Index 579

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