4.0
Slouching Towards Utopia
ByPublisher Description
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 the Year 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. This is a book of remarkable breadth and ambition, revealing the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right direction.
“A magisterial history.”—Paul Krugman
Named a Best Book of the Year 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. This is a book of remarkable breadth and ambition, revealing the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right direction.
Download the free Fable app

Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesAbout J. Bradford DeLong
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.
Other books by J. Bradford DeLong
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
