AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL
TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST ECONOMICS BOOK OF THE YEAR AND THE
ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR From one of the world's leading economists a sweeping new history
of the twentieth century - a century that left us vastly richer yet still profoundly
dissatisfied. Before 1870 most people lived in dire poverty the benefits of the slow crawl
of invention continually offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention
sprinted forward doubling our technological capabilities each generation and creatively
destroying the economy again and again. Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of the major
economic and technological shifts of the 20th century in a bold and ambitious grand narrative.
In vivid and compelling detail DeLong charts the unprecedented explosion of material wealth
after 1870 which transformed living standards around the world freeing humanity from centuries
of poverty but paradoxically has left us now with unprecedented inequality global warming
and widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. How did the long twentieth century fail
to deliver the utopia our ancestors believed would be the inevitable result of such material
wellbeing? How did humanity end up less on a march to progress than a slouch in the right
direction? And what can we learn from the past in pursuit of a better world?
