Slouching Towards Utopia
An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $45.44
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Allan Aquino
-
Written by:
-
J. Bradford DeLong
About this listen
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 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.
©2022 J. Bradford DeLong (P)2022 Basic BooksYou may also enjoy...
-
The Wages of Destruction
- The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
- Written by: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Adam Tooze, Simon Vance
- Length: 30 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze's controversial book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period.
-
-
A re-telling of World War II
- By Chillyfinger on 2022-11-30
Written by: Adam Tooze
-
Crashed
- How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
- Written by: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Simon Vance, Adam Tooze
- Length: 25 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all — the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath. Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
-
-
Initially a bit dry but worth the slog
- By Nadège on 2019-02-21
Written by: Adam Tooze
-
Chip War
- The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology
- Written by: Chris Miller
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing.
-
-
Transistor, transistor, transistor.
- By Vitalii on 2022-11-30
Written by: Chris Miller
-
For Profit
- A History of Corporations
- Written by: William Magnuson
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans have long been skeptical of corporations, and that skepticism has only grown more intense in recent years. Meanwhile, corporations continue to amass wealth and power at a dizzying rate, recklessly pursuing profit while leaving society to sort out the costs. In For Profit, law professor William Magnuson argues that the story of the corporation didn’t have to come to this. Throughout history, he finds, corporations have been purpose-built to benefit the societies that surrounded them.
Written by: William Magnuson
-
Of Boys and Men
- Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It
- Written by: Richard V. Reeves
- Narrated by: Richard V. Reeves
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The father of three sons, a journalist, and a Brookings Institution scholar, Richard V. Reeves has spent twenty-five years worrying about boys both at home and work. His new book, Of Boys and Men, tackles the complex and urgent crisis of boyhood and manhood. Reeves looks at the structural challenges that face boys and men and offers fresh and innovative solutions that turn the page on the corrosive narrative that plagues this issue. Of Boys and Men argues that helping the other half of society does not mean giving up on the ideal of gender equality.
-
-
A book for our times to build a future we can be proud of.
- By Tera Warner on 2024-11-12
Written by: Richard V. Reeves
-
Reaganland
- America's Right Turn 1976-1980
- Written by: Rick Perlstein
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz, Jonathan Todd Ross, Jacques Roy, and others
- Length: 45 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over two decades, Rick Perlstein has published three definitive works about the emerging dominance of conservatism in modern American politics. With the saga's final installment, he has delivered yet another stunning literary and historical achievement. In late 1976, Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a man without a political future: defeated in his nomination bid against a sitting president of his own party, blamed for President Gerald Ford's defeat, too old to make another run.
-
-
.ust read this to learn the insanity of US
- By Anonymous User on 2022-01-29
Written by: Rick Perlstein
-
The Wages of Destruction
- The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
- Written by: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Adam Tooze, Simon Vance
- Length: 30 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze's controversial book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period.
-
-
A re-telling of World War II
- By Chillyfinger on 2022-11-30
Written by: Adam Tooze
-
Crashed
- How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
- Written by: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Simon Vance, Adam Tooze
- Length: 25 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Current events have deep roots, and the key to navigating today’s roiling policies lies in the events that started it all — the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath. Despite initial attempts to downplay the crisis as a local incident, what happened on Wall Street beginning in 2008 was, in fact, a dramatic caesura of global significance that spiraled around the world, from the financial markets of the UK and Europe to the factories and dockyards of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
-
-
Initially a bit dry but worth the slog
- By Nadège on 2019-02-21
Written by: Adam Tooze
-
Chip War
- The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology
- Written by: Chris Miller
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing.
-
-
Transistor, transistor, transistor.
- By Vitalii on 2022-11-30
Written by: Chris Miller
-
For Profit
- A History of Corporations
- Written by: William Magnuson
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans have long been skeptical of corporations, and that skepticism has only grown more intense in recent years. Meanwhile, corporations continue to amass wealth and power at a dizzying rate, recklessly pursuing profit while leaving society to sort out the costs. In For Profit, law professor William Magnuson argues that the story of the corporation didn’t have to come to this. Throughout history, he finds, corporations have been purpose-built to benefit the societies that surrounded them.
Written by: William Magnuson
-
Of Boys and Men
- Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It
- Written by: Richard V. Reeves
- Narrated by: Richard V. Reeves
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The father of three sons, a journalist, and a Brookings Institution scholar, Richard V. Reeves has spent twenty-five years worrying about boys both at home and work. His new book, Of Boys and Men, tackles the complex and urgent crisis of boyhood and manhood. Reeves looks at the structural challenges that face boys and men and offers fresh and innovative solutions that turn the page on the corrosive narrative that plagues this issue. Of Boys and Men argues that helping the other half of society does not mean giving up on the ideal of gender equality.
-
-
A book for our times to build a future we can be proud of.
- By Tera Warner on 2024-11-12
Written by: Richard V. Reeves
-
Reaganland
- America's Right Turn 1976-1980
- Written by: Rick Perlstein
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz, Jonathan Todd Ross, Jacques Roy, and others
- Length: 45 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over two decades, Rick Perlstein has published three definitive works about the emerging dominance of conservatism in modern American politics. With the saga's final installment, he has delivered yet another stunning literary and historical achievement. In late 1976, Ronald Reagan was dismissed as a man without a political future: defeated in his nomination bid against a sitting president of his own party, blamed for President Gerald Ford's defeat, too old to make another run.
-
-
.ust read this to learn the insanity of US
- By Anonymous User on 2022-01-29
Written by: Rick Perlstein
-
The Power Law
- Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
- Written by: Sebastian Mallaby
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives the VC business, all of Silicon Valley, the wider tech sector, and, by extension, the world.
Written by: Sebastian Mallaby
-
The Economic Weapon
- The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War
- Written by: Nicholas Mulder
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Economic sanctions dominate the landscape of world politics today. First developed in the early twentieth century as a way of exploiting the flows of globalization to defend liberal internationalism, their appeal is that they function as an alternative to war. This view, however, ignores the dark paradox at their core: designed to prevent war, economic sanctions are modeled on devastating techniques of warfare.
-
-
Couldn’t get into it
- By Steven on 2023-02-27
Written by: Nicholas Mulder
-
How the World Really Works
- The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going
- Written by: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Stephen Perring
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don’t know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check—because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts.
-
-
How the World Really Works [For Oligarchs]
- By CoreDev on 2024-04-14
Written by: Vaclav Smil
-
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
- America and the World in the Free Market Era
- Written by: Gary Gerstle
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades.
-
-
A recap of events with few new insights
- By SV on 2022-12-23
Written by: Gary Gerstle
-
The World
- A Family History of Humanity
- Written by: Simon Sebag Montefiore
- Narrated by: Simon Sebag Montefiore, full cast
- Length: 68 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Around 950,000 years ago, a family of five walked along the beach and left behind the oldest family footprints ever discovered. For award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, these poignant, familiar fossils serve as an inspiration for a new kind of world history, one that is genuinely global, spans all eras and all continents, and focuses on the family ties that connect every one of us. In this epic, ever-surprising book, Montefiore chronicles the world’s great dynasties across human history to the people at the heart of the human drama.
-
-
Impressive
- By Kindle Customer on 2023-09-14
Written by: Simon Sebag Montefiore
-
Burn
- New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy
- Written by: Herman Pontzer PhD
- Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pontzer's groundbreaking studies with hunter-gatherer tribes show how exercise doesn't increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range: nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level. This was a brilliant evolutionary strategy to survive in times of famine. Now it seems to doom us to obesity. The good news is we can lose weight, but we need to cut calories. Refuting such weight-loss hype as paleo, keto, anti-gluten, anti-grain, and even vegan, Pontzer discusses how all diets succeed or fail: For shedding pounds, a calorie is a calorie.
-
-
what a freekin' rigamaroo
- By Mairin Brennan on 2022-02-01
Written by: Herman Pontzer PhD
-
Empires of the Sea
- The Contest for the Center of the World
- Written by: Roger Crowley
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Empires of the Sea tells the story of the 50-year world war between Islam and Christianity for the Mediterranean: one of the fiercest and most influential contests in European history. It traces events from the appearance on the world stage of Suleiman the Magnificent through "the years of devastation" when it seemed possible that Islam might master the whole sea, to the final brief flourishing of a united Christendom in 1571.
-
-
Wow!
- By Matt on 2018-10-07
Written by: Roger Crowley
-
A City on Mars
- Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
- Written by: Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley, Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea.
-
-
Honest and hilarious. Loved it.
- By Amazon Customer on 2024-06-24
Written by: Kelly Weinersmith, and others
-
The Man from the Future
- The Visionary Life of John von Neumann
- Written by: Ananyo Bhattacharya
- Narrated by: Nicholas Camm
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann.
Written by: Ananyo Bhattacharya
-
The Big Myth
- How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
- Written by: Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
- Narrated by: Liza Seneca
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with 'big government' and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor.
Written by: Naomi Oreskes, and others
-
The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- Written by: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
-
-
Meant for reading not listening
- By Christine Tan on 2019-01-26
Written by: Isabel Wilkerson
-
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945
- Written by: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 43 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Almost a decade in the making, this much-anticipated grand history of postwar Europe from one of the world’s most esteemed historians and intellectuals is a singular achievement. Postwar is the first modern history that covers all of Europe, both east and west, drawing on research in six languages to sweep readers through 34 nations and 60 years of political and cultural change—all in one integrated, enthralling narrative.
-
-
Good content; terrible narrator
- By Daly Close on 2020-01-30
Written by: Tony Judt
What the critics say
“Brad DeLong learnedly and grippingly tells the story of how all the economic growth since 1870 has created a global economy that today satisfies no one’s ideas of fairness. The long journey toward economic justice and more equal rights and opportunities for all shall and will continue.”—Thomas Piketty, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century
“What a joy to finally have Brad DeLong’s masterful interpretation of twentieth-century economic history down on paper. Slouching Towards Utopia is engaging, important, and awe-inspiring in its breadth and creativity.”—Christina Romer, University of California, Berkeley
“History provides the only data we have for charting a course forward in these turbulent times. I have not seen a more revealing and illuminating book about economics and what it means in a very long time. Slouching Towards Utopia should be required reading for anybody who cares about the future of the global system, and that should be everyone.”—Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University
What listeners say about Slouching Towards Utopia
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 2023-07-04
Ok, but tough as audible
Tough to retain over audio if we’re being honest. Great storytelling though, good use of humour and recurring themes to keep attention
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!