deindustrialization

Star's Reach: A Novel of the Deindustrial Future

by John Michael Greer  · 14 Apr 2014  · 466pp  · 159,321 words

Star’s Reach A Novel of the Deindustrial Future John Michael Greer Star's Reach Copyright © 2014 by John Michael Greer Published 2014 by Founders House Publishing, LLC Cover art © Fotografieco/Dreamstime.com

…

.com Full Contents Start Reading About The Author Copyright Author’s Note There’s a certain irony in the fact that this tale of the deindustrial future first appeared in serial form as a monthly blog post on the internet, that most baroque of modern industrial society’s technosystems. That said

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work

by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams  · 1 Oct 2015  · 357pp  · 95,986 words

the labour supply wreaked havoc on low-skilled black workers. With manufacturing jobs shipped overseas or subject to automation, these workers were disproportionately affected by deindustrialisation.91 Industrial jobs left the urban centres and were replaced by service work often located in distant suburban areas.92 The urban ghettos were left

…

they both function as a desperate means of survival.105 But while primitive accumulation is responsible for the origins of these slums, it is ‘premature deindustrialisation’ that looks set to consolidate their existence. If previous periods of industrialisation at least had the benefit of providing enough factory jobs for the new

…

proletariat, premature deindustrialisation threatens to eliminate this traditional pathway entirely. Technological and economic developments now enable countries to virtually leapfrog the industrialisation phase, which means that developing economies

…

are now deindustrialising at much lower rates of per capita income and with much lower shares of manufacturing employment.106 China is a good example of this, with

…

a focus on ‘technological upgrading [and] productivity enhancements’ in order to maintain growth.110 The automation of factories is at the leading edge of this deindustrialisation trend, with China already the biggest purchaser of industrial robots, and expected to soon have more industrial robots in operation than either Europe or North

…

America.111 The factory of the world is going robotic. Deindustrialisation can also be seen in ‘reshoring’, where manufacturing returns to developed economies in jobless, automated forms.112 These deindustrialisation trends are taking hold across the developing economies of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and most

…

this is not only an incomplete transition to a significant working class, but also the stymying of the expected employment path for the workforce. Premature deindustrialisation is leaving most of the world’s urban proletariat dispossessed of its agricultural livelihood and without the opportunity to be hired for manufacturing jobs. Some

…

this non-routine cognitive labour is increasingly automated, what may occur is a premature shift away from a service-based economy – on top of premature deindustrialisation. What this means is that the maintenance of large portions of humanity within slums and informal, non-capitalist economies is likely to be consolidated by

…

at the time. 3.Slum populations will continue to grow due to the automation of low-skilled service work, and will be exacerbated by premature deindustrialisation. 4.Urban marginality in the developed economies will grow in size as low-skilled, low-wage jobs are automated. 5.The transformation of higher education

…

over 1.6 million robots.18 In terms of employment, manufacturing has reached a global saturation point. Even in developing countries, the trend is towards deindustrialisation, with employment growth now confined predominantly to the service sector.19 Concurrent with the decline of manufacturing, the latter half of the twentieth century oversaw

…

, its organisational structures fell apart, and today ‘there is no longer a class fraction that can hegemonise the class’.10 Under the combined pressures of deindustrialisation, the globalisation of production, the rise of service economies, the expansion of precarity, the demise of classic Fordist footholds and the proliferation of diverse identities

…

to unify was always a limited phenomenon, and these differences persist today, exacerbated under conditions of a globalised division of labour. Perhaps more fundamentally, if deindustrialisation (the automation of manufacturing) is a necessary stage along the path towards a postcapitalist society, then the industrial working class could never have been the

…

agent of change. Its existence was predicated upon economic conditions that would have to be eliminated in the transition to postcapitalism. If deindustrialisation is required for the transition to postcapitalism, then the industrial working class was inevitably going to lose its power in the process – fragmenting and falling

…

.Jan Breman, ‘A Bogus Concept?’, New Left Review II/84 (November–December 2013), p. 137. 101.Sukti Dasgupta and Ajit Singh, Manufacturing, Services and Premature Deindustrialization in Developing Countries: A Kaldorian Analysis, Working Paper Series, World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2006, at ideas.repec.org, p. 6; Breman, ‘Introduction’, p

…

to decline as a share of GDP at per capita levels of around $3,000, rather than $10,000. Dani Rodrik, ‘The Perils of Premature Deindustrialization’, Project Syndicate, 11 October 2013, at project-syndicate.org, p. 5. 107.Over 30 million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 1996. Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew

…

, at bcg.com; Stephanie Clifford, ‘US Textile Plants Return, with Floors Largely Empty of People’, New York Times, 19 September 2013. 113.Dani Rodrik, Premature Deindustrialization, BREAD Working Paper No. 439, Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development, 2015, at ipl.econ.duke.edu, p. 2. 114.Fiona Tregenna, Manufacturing

…

Productivity, Deindustrialization, and Reindustrialization, World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2011, at econstor.eu, p. 11. 115.Out of a labour force of 481 million, approximately 1

…

Machines as Well as Machinations’, in Brian Elliot, ed., Technology and Social Change (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988), p. 27. 16.Fiona Tregenna, Manufacturing Productivity, Deindustrialization, and Reindustrialization, World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2011, at econstor.eu, p. 7. 17.Colin Gill, Work, Unemployment and the New Technology (Cambridge: Polity

…

, 94, 95, 98, 104, 121, 123, 126, 130, 156, 157, 166, 167, 173, 174 precarious, 2, 64, 117, 129, 167 Precarious Workers Brigade, 117 premature deindustrialisation, 97, 98 primitive accumulation, 87, 89, 90, 96, 97 prison, 90, 102, 103, 119, 133 incarceration, 102, 103, 104, 105, 161 productivity, 74, 88, 97

Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change

by Dieter Helm  · 2 Sep 2020  · 304pp  · 90,084 words

not true. The net zero carbon production target takes no account of the carbon we import, and which pervades much of our spending. For a deindustrialised economy with only 20 per cent manufacturing, this is particularly pertinent. To give a simple example, if British Steel had closed down (something which was

…

case pollution on a planetary scale. Every other country in the world pales into insignificance in terms of added environmental pollution since 1990. The Europeans deindustrialised, and the US went sideways. From around 2005, the US had natural gas to substitute for coal, and hence it could both grow and limit

…

, the EU, Russia and China have committed themselves to targets which are largely within their own interests. The EU, as we shall see, has been deindustrialising and its emissions were always going to fall anyway. The US is never going to sign up to a global treaty which gives the UN

…

hence the new Eastern European members would have steeply falling emissions from 1990. The Western EU member states were also well into their own structural deindustrialisation. However, because of poor domestic policies, Germany would struggle to meet its own 2020 target; for many it was a cruise. The baseline of 1990

…

cobble together an agreement. The EU pitched in early, and it was the EU that clearly led on ambition. It could, because Europe continued its deindustrialisation, whereas China and India were industrialising, and the US remained an industrial economy. The outcome at Paris repeated what had gone before, with a few

…

much to reduce its carbon footprint, despite cutting emissions at home. And much of these cuts would have happened anyway. It is a story of deindustrialisation, and importing carbon emissions instead of producing them. Any other country considering unilateralism in response to what Europe has done, and especially if they look

…

, will have an impact beyond the first 30 years and, as we will see, the carbon price that may result will still be seriously inadequate. Deindustrialisation and the UK The really big story behind the unilateral policies and their failure to have an impact on the growth of the global concentration

…

to break down. Sharp rises in energy and labour costs permanently damaged Europe’s competitiveness and it would never fully recover. There began a gradual deindustrialisation, as other parts of the world picked up market share. The German economic miracle gave way to the Japanese and Korean economic miracles, and then

…

1989.) This matters for the impact of unilateral policies because what Europe did in the last 30 years was create an additional boost to a deindustrialising process already under way. The Renewable Energy Directive and the EU ETS increased the costs of doing business in Europe. What the EU achieved was

…

carbon-intensive imports simply did not count at all. The lesson others learned from all this is that a unilateral policy can actually speed up deindustrialisation. That is not what the US has had in mind, and China could sit back, talk the talk and encourage the Europeans to

…

deindustrialise further, in the knowledge that it would be Chinese companies that would go on benefiting. The UK’s Climate Change Act The UK went further

…

coal and nuclear power stations to stay ahead of the curve.[7] When the UK economy went into free fall in 1980, and as it deindustrialised and entered a period of much lower growth, some of those power stations, epitomised by Drax, then the largest coal-fired power station in the

…

, 44, 47, 55, 87, 95, 145, 146, 149–50, 155, 172–3, 179, 197–8, 229 Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) 170 deindustrialisation x, 29, 46, 52, 54, 59, 72–4, 218 Deng Xiaoping 27 Denmark 69–70, 136–7 desalination 135–6, 179 diesel 4, 20–1

…

, 46, 47, 117, 137, 165, 166, 197; baseline of 1990 and 51–2 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 76, 165 competition regime and customs union 56 deindustrialisation and 46, 52, 54, 59, 72–4 directives for 2030 66 Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) 71–2, 73, 79, 110–13, 117, 144, 208

…

, phasing out of 24–5, 60–1, 77, 208 Committee on Climate Change (CCC) x–xi, 7, 74–6, 120, 164, 166, 169, 217, 235 deindustrialisation and 72–4 80 per cent carbon reduction target by 2050 74 electricity and 206, 208, 218, 219, 224 Helm Review (‘The Cost of Energy

The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All

by Martin Sandbu  · 15 Jun 2020  · 322pp  · 84,580 words

and rural hinterland where incomes have increasingly fallen behind and economic opportunities have become more limited (I discuss this at greater length in chapter 11). Deindustrialisation is again a big part of the reason for this. The big shift from manufacturing to services favours some kinds of places over others.11

…

Western societies, nor at their political consequences. * * * Strike two: A great recession made at home. If Western governments’ policy mistakes had been confined to mismanaging deindustrialisation, populist forces may have remained quiescent after their initial, largely unsuccessful emergence in the 1980s. But the global financial crisis in 2008 and the Great

…

Is Europe? Evidence from Distributional National Accounts, 1980–2017,” WID.world Working Paper 2019/06, April 2019, https://wid.world/europe2019. Like the response to deindustrialisation, bad economic policies made matters worse. The immediate response to the crisis by finance ministers and central bankers from autumn 2008 to spring 2009 was

…

not see it coming.19 In this respect, the global financial crisis was a worse indictment of Western policy makers than the botched response to deindustrialisation, and the second strike less forgivable than the first. The sectoral transformation of the employment structure was the inevitable consequence of deep technological changes beyond

…

off. This has added people who may have been faring reasonably well until 2008 to the ranks of those bearing the cost of decades of deindustrialisation. In a sentence: incontinent policy before the crisis brought a financial collapse, and timid policy afterwards amplified the suffering it caused. * * * Strike three: the task

…

ahead. In the baseball metaphor, the first strike for many Western governments was their poor handling of deindustrialisation; and for most, the second strike was the run-up to and the aftermath of the global financial crisis. A third economic challenge is now

…

is likely to take another hit. Unless governments adopt policies that handle this disruption better, it will potentially affect even greater numbers of people than deindustrialisation. And to the extent that researchers can predict it, it is the places most left behind by the previous wave of automation that are most

…

the price of carbon, it therefore looks like a recipe for worsening the culture wars over not just climate policy but Western politics overall. Mishandled deindustrialisation has already undermined entire ways of life in many Western countries. The changes now required to address climate change threaten to do the same all

…

; populist vs. elite, 14–15 deaths of despair, 36, 194 Deaton, Angus, 194 debt deflation, 156 debt financing, 155–60 debt restructuring, 159–60, 166 deindustrialisation, 29, 56–62 DeLong, Bradford, 145 demand management, 106, 132–33, 138–44, 146–47, 151, 216–17 Denmark: economic change as trigger for populism

The New Snobbery

by David Skelton  · 28 Jun 2021  · 226pp  · 58,341 words

by merit and talent. This has coincided with a two-tier economy created by the decline of skilled manufacturing and the growth of graduate jobs. Deindustrialisation created a social and economic blight that impacted several generations and is still being felt today. ‘Wealth creators’ have become lionised; professional careers have been

…

religions’. The conservatism that was on display in working-class communities was seldom of the sort that the national Conservative Party displayed. An association with deindustrialisation meant that the party seemed disinterested in dignity of work or strong communities. The shedding of many elements of conservatism in favour of an increasingly

…

supporters the butt of their jokes, is one legitimised by a system that argues society has been sorted based on ‘merit’. In tandem with excess deindustrialisation, it has helped to create a gulf in esteem and dignity, which has relegated the concerns of workers to beneath those of the managerial class

…

status as their ancestors; the reverence for workers that previously existed has been replaced by the newly fashionable snobbery. Since the 1970s, the UK has deindustrialised more than any other major economy, from around a third of the economy to only 10 per cent. This was done in the name of

…

esteem used to be spread evenly across the economy, it is now reserved for jobs towards the knowledge end of the economy. The aftermath of deindustrialisation has created an economic polarisation, which has led to a political polarisation and a growing gulf in understanding and empathy. A good job in manufacturing

…

been at Rover. This is a clear illustration of the fact that all jobs are not created equal. Although many who lost their jobs following deindustrialisation were able to find other work, this new work was often lower paid, with less security and less social esteem than the skilled manufacturing job

…

they had held before. It wasn’t just the post-industrial towns that took the hit from the UK’s rapid deindustrialisation; it was the economy as a whole. One of our major national problems is the fact that our productivity lags behind most major European countries

…

manufacturing, rather than modernisation without manufacturing; the assumption underlying this economic shift was wrong. Any argument that deindustrialisation was inevitable is deeply flawed and ignores that sector’s success in other countries. Treating deindustrialisation as an unalterable economic inevitability or a sign of progress and ‘modernisation’ was mindless at best and negligent

…

that were once dependent on skilled, proud work found that they were buffeted by two major economic shocks in a matter of decades. The first, deindustrialisation, saw massive economic dislocation, widespread unemployment, greater insecurity and, ultimately, greater dependence on both unskilled work and the public sector. Decades later, the highest levels

…

320 per cent compared to only 12 per cent for industry, and has been maintained ever since. This financialisation coincided with a deep and damaging deindustrialisation, which transformed the UK from a production-led to a consumption-led economy. An equally important transformation was the financial sector moving from one that

…

to build up the City of London and make the UK a home for finance. Successive governments made the political choice to let the UK deindustrialise more than any other major economy and, with it, lose much of the legacy of skilled engineering and skilled work that had made the country

…

the Creation of Millions of High-Quality Manufacturing Jobs at the Centre of Our Economic Goals It is essential that we remake the economy so deindustrialisation is replaced by rapid reindustrialisation. An industrial policy with an explicit goal of increasing the manufacturing share of output is essential to boost productivity, revive

…

and communities. Sadly, stories of manufacturing success are all too often the exceptions that prove the rule of lasting deindustrialisation – and this wasn’t just a 1980s story; the UK has also deindustrialised more than any other major economy since 1990. Many things were lost in the decision made by successive governments

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay

by Guy Standing  · 13 Jul 2016  · 443pp  · 98,113 words

income, up from about a fifth before the Global Transformation started. The share of income going to profits in non-financial sectors actually fell. Meanwhile, deindustrialisation has been relentless. During the early twentieth century, agriculture shrank to less than 3 per cent of US national income, while manufacturing began its steep

…

of 1986, when the City of London was deregulated. One outcome has been a persistently strong currency, which has made manufacturing exports uncompetitive and accelerated deindustrialisation. It has also boosted inequality.52 Canada suffered similarly after 2008, when money flowed into its financial sector because it had largely escaped the turbulence

…

on the right is equally fascinating. Its old class base also weakened in the early phase of globalisation and the early stages of rentier capitalism. Deindustrialisation meant a dwindling number of industrialists to fund and mobilise support. Moreover, all across the Western world, middle-income groups seemed to be shrinking as

…

the immediate gains in tax cuts for the rich and in welfare payments arising from high unemployment linked to the strong currency and the resultant deindustrialisation then devastating British manufacturing. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, had the UK used tax receipts from its oil and gas fields to build up a wealth fund

…

, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and securitisation 1, 2 and social policy 1 student debt 1, 2 and tax breaks 1 ‘debt overhang’ 1 deindustrialisation 1, 2, 3 democracy and banking systems 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 circuits of power 1 commodification of 1, 2 and education 1

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

by David Harvey  · 3 Apr 2014  · 464pp  · 116,945 words

(with biomedical and genetic engineering and artificial intelligence at the forefront). But innovation is always a double-edged sword. The 1980s, after all, gave us deindustrialisation through automation such that the likes of General Motors (which employed well-paid unionised labour in the 1960s) have now been supplanted by the likes

…

flow, then the things that facilitate the flows become useless and have to be abandoned and rental returns collapse. The long and painful history of deindustrialisation has left whole cities, like Detroit, bereft of activity and therefore sinks of lost value even as other cities, like Shenzhen or Dhaka, become hubs

…

in the physical landscape we inhabit. The balance between creativity and destruction is often hard to discern, but the costs imposed on whole populations through deindustrialisation, gyrations in property values and land rents, disinvestment and speculative building all emanate from the underlying and perpetual tension between fixity and motion which periodically

…

life and modes of being and thinking have to drastically alter to embrace the new at the expense of the old. The recent history of deindustrialisation and its association with dramatic technological reconfigurations is an obvious case in point. Technological change is neither costless nor painless and the cost and the

…

, of course, the left is bound to defend jobs and skills under threat. But, as the miserable history of the noble rearguard action fought against deindustrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrates, this will likely be a losing battle against a newly emerging technological configuration from the very beginning. An anti

…

more spectacularly, China joined the new centres of factory labour in Mexico, Bangladesh, Turkey and many other parts of the world. The West became broadly deindustrialised, while the East and the global South became centres for industrial value production alongside their more traditional role of primary commodity producers and extractors of

…

ships greatly reduced the cost and time of movement of agricultural commodities after 1850 or so, much as containerisation did for world trade after 1970. Deindustrialisation (the nether side of geographical expansion) has been going on for a very long time. The second way to reduce the time and cost of

…

get redirected from one space to another. The capitalist system remains relatively stable as a whole, even though the parts experience periodic difficulties (such as deindustrialisation here or partial devaluations there). The overall effect of such interregional volatility is to temporarily reduce the aggregate dangers of overaccumulation and devaluation even though

…

it was greedy unions, profligate politicians, bad managers and the like who forced capital out. But it was capital and not people that abandoned and deindustrialised Detroit, Pittsburgh, Sheffield, Manchester, Mumbai and the like. While there have been obvious examples of mismanagement and heightened class conflicts in this or that region

…

new plants drive out old before their lifetime is over, as more expensive items are replaced by cheaper items because of technological changes. The rapid deindustrialisation of older industrial districts in the 1970s and 1980s in North America and Europe is an obvious example. In times of crisis, of war or

…

debt peonage 62, 212 decentralisation 49, 142, 143, 144, 146, 148, 219, 281, 295 Declaration of Independence (US) 284 decolonisation 282, 288, 290 decommodification 85 deindustrialisation xii, 77–8, 98, 110, 148, 153, 159, 234 DeLong, Bradford 228 demand management 81, 82, 106, 176 demand-side management 85 democracy 47, 215

…

64 Erasmus, Desiderius 283 ethnic hatreds and discriminations 8, 165 ethnic minorities 168 ethnicisation 62 ethnicity 7, 68, 116 euro, the 15, 37, 46 Europe deindustrialisation in 234 economic development in 10 fascist parties 280 low population growth rate 230 social democratic era 18 unemployment 108 women in labour force 230

…

70 NGOs (non-governmental organisations) 189, 210, 284, 286, 287 Nike 31 Nkrumah, Kwame 291 ‘non-coincidence of interests’ 25 Nordic countries 165 North America deindustrialisation in 234 food grain exports 148 indigenous population and property rights 39 women in labour force 230 ‘not in my back yard’ politics 20 nuclear

The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism

by David Harvey  · 1 Jan 2010  · 369pp  · 94,588 words

the mid-west, but in the west and the south. The result was the wrenching and relentless reorganisation and relocation of production throughout the world. Deindustrialisation of older production centres occurred everywhere from Pittsburgh’s, Sheffield’s and Essen’s steel industry to Mumbai’s textile industry. This was paralleled by

…

wars can disrupt flows. Furthermore, revolutions in spatial and temporal relations produce stresses and crises (witness the difficult adjustments forced on many cities by widespread deindustrialisation in the heartlands of capitalist production in the 1980s as production moved to east Asia). The geography this produces will be examined later. Why do

…

for by capitalist producers in the here and now. Abandoning all those assets, as happened to many older industrial cities in the huge wave of deindustrialisation of the 1980s, incurs losses (social as well as infrastructural) and can itself be a source of crises that affect not only those that hold

…

consequent upon innovations in transport and communications can revolutionise the global landscape of production and consumption (as we have already argued in the case of deindustrialisation) and produce ‘switching crises’ (sudden switches in flows of capital investment from one ‘hot spot’ to another) within a volatile system of uneven geographical development

…

the repositioning of the state apparatus with respect to social provision). Capital was re-empowered vis-à-vis labour through the production of unemployment and deindustrialisation, immigration, offshoring and all manner of technological and organisational changes (e.g. subcontracting). When later coupled with an ideological and political attack on all forms

…

processes, as well as the active struggles that produced it. The uneven geographical development that results is as infinitely varied as it is volatile: a deindustrialised city in northern China; a shrinking city in what was once East Germany; the booming industrial cities in the Pearl River delta; an IT concentration

…

with a second area not too far away (in Pennsylvania, say) that was once a thriving steel and metal-working town that has recently suffered deindustrialisation and plant closures. The population was once homogeneous enough, built around seemingly secure and unionised male blue-collar jobs with family structures based on that

…

’s will! Marx and Engels spelled out the secular consequences of this in their 1848 Communist Manifesto in ways that every worker who has experienced deindustrialisation over the last forty years will readily understand: All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by

…

to harness the possibilities immanent within an existing situation. Since the existing situation varies enormously from Nepal, to the Pacific regions of Bolivia, to the deindustrialising cities of Michigan and the still booming cities of Mumbai and Shanghai and the damaged but by no means destroyed financial centres of New York

…

advanced capitalist world they have become ever more prominent over the last thirty years because of changing labour relations imposed by neoliberal corporate restructuring and deindustrialisation. It is wrong to ignore the struggles of all these other workers. Many of the revolutionary movements in capitalism’s history have been broadly urban

…

transformation 128 A Abu Dhabi 222 Académie Française 91 accumulation by dispossession 48–9, 244 acid deposition 75, 187 activity spheres 121–4, 128, 130 deindustrialised working-class area 151 and ‘green revolution’ 185–6 institutional and administrative arrangements 123 ‘mental conceptions of the world’ 123 patterns of relations between 196

…

74, 187 de-leveraging 30 debt-financing 17, 131, 141, 169 decentralisation 165, 201 decolonisation 31, 208, 212 deficit financing 35, 111 deforestation 74, 143 deindustrialisation 33, 43, 88, 131, 150, 157, 243 Deleuze, Gilles 128 demand consumer 107, 109 effective 107, 110–14, 116, 118, 221, 222 lack of 47

Paint Your Town Red

by Matthew Brown  · 14 Jun 2021

spectrum agree that we need to find a new way of addressing the major divides in wealth and opportunity between and within regions. Decades of deindustrialisation and austerity have depressed many communities and decisions made by increasingly remote central governments have made people feel that they have little power to influence

…

decades in the making and is rooted in the past forty years of economic strategies which have overseen a rolling back of the welfare state, deindustrialisation, attacks on wages and working conditions, and weakening of local civic infrastructure. All of this has been exacerbated by the austerity imposed in response to

…

struggling and crisis-hit population and the profits made by investment banks and stockbrokers is ever more glaring. Even before this point, previous responses to deindustrialisation, and the structural unemployment and impoverishment it wrought on so many communities, continued to place too much faith in employment and housing strategies driven by

…

been in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. One of America’s poorest large cities, it had been losing jobs and residents for decades due to deindustrialisation, disinvestment and capital flight — not dissimilar to many major cities and towns across the US, Europe and UK. However, Cleveland still had very large non

…

terms, it has taken the small city of Preston in Northern England from being one of the country’s most deprived and disadvantaged, hit by deindustrialisation, austerity and government funding cuts, to seeing significant economic improvement through shifting spending and investment from external suppliers to local producers and businesses. Inspired by

…

been voted the UK’s most improved city in which to live and work.1 What Were Preston’s Problems? The past forty years of deindustrialisation, council funding cuts and austerity in the UK have hit the North of the country particularly hard, with wealth, opportunities and influence becoming increasingly tightly

…

people have a long history in the UK and beyond. Both these things are becoming increasingly viable alternatives as a response to the problems of deindustrialisation, unemployment, and inequality, which the status quo has failed to solve. Again, these alternatives are developing through community wealth-building strategies as a collaboration between

…

the resources and support of local authorities and the skills, initiatives and enterprise of grassroots groups and individuals. Old Approaches to Deindustrialisation The economic and social impact of the deindustrialisation which affected many parts of Britain from the late 1970s still casts a shadow over much of the country. The Welsh economy

…

, a number which rises to around 50% in former industrial areas. As in many other regions, the collapse of large-scale single-site employment following deindustrialisation has reshaped the economic base so that private-sector employment is dominated by microfirms and SMEs, which poses practical challenges around how to politically engage

…

and resources to the local community via sustainable stewardship, including hydropower alongside crop-growing, timber-processing and tourism. The issue of reforesting in Wales, after deindustrialisation saw the end of large forestry projects producing pit-props, has been given less attention than in Scotland, where reforesting has included sawmills using local

…

merely common sense. We do not pretend to offer a single panacea for all the social, economic and political ills produced by forty years of deindustrialisation, austerity and neglect, but the initiatives outlined in this book clearly show that addressing these ills is possible. We are not claiming that this is

Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters

by Oliver Franklin-Wallis  · 21 Jun 2023  · 309pp  · 121,279 words

.12 billion tonnes of industrial waste.27 (In pure coincidence, this fits almost precisely with the 97–3 estimate.)28 In the UK, a relatively deindustrialised nation, ‘commercial and industrial’ wastes amounted to 43.9 million tonnes in 2018, plus a further 57.5 million tonnes of ‘non-hazardous construction and

…

/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/ 21 David Stradling and Richard Stradling, ‘Perceptions of the Burning River: Deindustrialization and Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River’, Environmental History, Vol. 13 (2008): http://www.jstor.org/stable/25473265 22 Wes Siler, ‘51 Years Later, the Cuyahoga River

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It

by Matthew Williams  · 23 Mar 2021  · 592pp  · 125,186 words

The London Problem: What Britain Gets Wrong About Its Capital City

by Jack Brown  · 14 Jul 2021  · 101pp  · 24,949 words

Automation and the Future of Work

by Aaron Benanav  · 3 Nov 2020  · 175pp  · 45,815 words

Powers and Prospects

by Noam Chomsky  · 16 Sep 2015

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization

by Richard Baldwin  · 14 Nov 2016  · 606pp  · 87,358 words

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

by Diane Coyle  · 15 Apr 2025  · 321pp  · 112,477 words

The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America

by Gabriel Winant  · 23 Mar 2021  · 563pp  · 136,190 words

The Globalization of Inequality

by François Bourguignon  · 1 Aug 2012  · 221pp  · 55,901 words

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right

by George R. Tyler  · 15 Jul 2013  · 772pp  · 203,182 words

Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism Through a Turbulent Century

by Torben Iversen and David Soskice  · 5 Feb 2019  · 550pp  · 124,073 words

The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World

by John Michael Greer  · 30 Sep 2009

Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing

by Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd and Laurie Macfarlane  · 28 Feb 2017  · 346pp  · 90,371 words

Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire

by Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson  · 15 Jan 2019  · 502pp  · 128,126 words

What Would the Great Economists Do?: How Twelve Brilliant Minds Would Solve Today's Biggest Problems

by Linda Yueh  · 4 Jun 2018  · 453pp  · 117,893 words

People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent

by Joseph E. Stiglitz  · 22 Apr 2019  · 462pp  · 129,022 words

Reaching for Utopia: Making Sense of an Age of Upheaval

by Jason Cowley  · 15 Nov 2018  · 283pp  · 87,166 words

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work

by Richard Baldwin  · 10 Jan 2019  · 301pp  · 89,076 words

Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics and the Coming Robotopia

by Frederik L. Schodt  · 31 Mar 1988  · 361pp  · 83,886 words

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

by Sven Beckert  · 2 Dec 2014  · 1,000pp  · 247,974 words

Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth

by Selina Todd  · 11 Feb 2021  · 598pp  · 150,801 words

The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today

by Linda Yueh  · 15 Mar 2018  · 374pp  · 113,126 words

A Pelican Introduction Economics: A User's Guide

by Ha-Joon Chang  · 26 May 2014  · 385pp  · 111,807 words

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century

by Fiona Hill  · 4 Oct 2021  · 569pp  · 165,510 words

Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy

by Dani Rodrik  · 8 Oct 2017  · 322pp  · 87,181 words

The Origins of the Urban Crisis

by Sugrue, Thomas J.

Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made

by Vaclav Smil  · 2 Mar 2021  · 1,324pp  · 159,290 words

Planet of Slums

by Mike Davis  · 1 Mar 2006  · 232pp

Once the American Dream: Inner-Ring Suburbs of the Metropolitan United States

by Bernadette Hanlon  · 18 Dec 2009

The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War

by Benn Steil  · 13 Feb 2018  · 913pp  · 219,078 words

The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class?and What We Can Do About It

by Richard Florida  · 9 May 2016  · 356pp  · 91,157 words

How to Kill a City: The Real Story of Gentrification

by Peter Moskowitz  · 7 Mar 2017  · 288pp  · 83,690 words

Public Places, Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design

by Matthew Carmona, Tim Heath, Steve Tiesdell and Taner Oc  · 15 Feb 2010  · 1,233pp  · 239,800 words

The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality

by Oded Galor  · 22 Mar 2022  · 426pp  · 83,128 words

The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times

by Giovanni Arrighi  · 15 Mar 2010  · 7,371pp  · 186,208 words

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

by David Harvey  · 2 Jan 1995  · 318pp  · 85,824 words

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order

by Rush Doshi  · 24 Jun 2021  · 816pp  · 191,889 words

Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism

by Premilla Nadasen  · 10 Oct 2023  · 288pp  · 82,972 words

Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America

by Erik Baker  · 13 Jan 2025  · 362pp  · 132,186 words

Failed State: The Sunday Times Bestselling Investigation Into Why Britain Is Struggling

by Sam Freedman  · 10 Jul 2024  · 368pp  · 101,133 words

The Global Minotaur

by Yanis Varoufakis and Paul Mason  · 4 Jul 2015  · 394pp  · 85,734 words

Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US City

by Mike Davis  · 27 Aug 2001

Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One

by Meghnad Desai  · 15 Feb 2015  · 270pp  · 73,485 words

An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy

by Marc Levinson  · 31 Jul 2016  · 409pp  · 118,448 words

Two Nations, Indivisible: A History of Inequality in America: A History of Inequality in America

by Jamie Bronstein  · 29 Oct 2016  · 332pp  · 89,668 words

Why We Can't Afford the Rich

by Andrew Sayer  · 6 Nov 2014  · 504pp  · 143,303 words

The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work

by David Frayne  · 15 Nov 2015  · 336pp  · 83,903 words

Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World

by Joshua B. Freeman  · 27 Feb 2018  · 538pp  · 145,243 words

The New Class War: Saving Democracy From the Metropolitan Elite

by Michael Lind  · 20 Feb 2020

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class

by Joel Kotkin  · 11 May 2020  · 393pp  · 91,257 words

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century

by Ryan Avent  · 20 Sep 2016  · 323pp  · 90,868 words

Big Data and the Welfare State: How the Information Revolution Threatens Social Solidarity

by Torben Iversen and Philipp Rehm  · 18 May 2022

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It

by Azeem Azhar  · 6 Sep 2021  · 447pp  · 111,991 words

Platform Capitalism

by Nick Srnicek  · 22 Dec 2016  · 116pp  · 31,356 words

The Capitalist Manifesto

by Johan Norberg  · 14 Jun 2023  · 295pp  · 87,204 words

The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy

by Richard Duncan  · 2 Apr 2012  · 248pp  · 57,419 words

"They Take Our Jobs!": And 20 Other Myths About Immigration

by Aviva Chomsky  · 23 Apr 2018  · 219pp  · 62,816 words

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

by Michelle Alexander  · 24 Nov 2011  · 467pp  · 116,902 words

The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment Is Reshaping Africa

by Irene Yuan Sun  · 16 Oct 2017  · 239pp  · 62,311 words

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future

by Noreena Hertz  · 13 May 2020  · 506pp  · 133,134 words

Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers

by Stephen Graham  · 8 Nov 2016  · 519pp  · 136,708 words

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy

by Ta-Nehisi Coates  · 2 Oct 2017  · 349pp  · 114,914 words

The Cost of Inequality: Why Economic Equality Is Essential for Recovery

by Stewart Lansley  · 19 Jan 2012  · 223pp  · 10,010 words

Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization

by Vaclav Smil  · 16 Dec 2013  · 396pp  · 117,897 words

Vanishing New York

by Jeremiah Moss  · 19 May 2017  · 479pp  · 140,421 words

The Tyranny of Nostalgia: Half a Century of British Economic Decline

by Russell Jones  · 15 Jan 2023  · 463pp  · 140,499 words

Rendezvous With Oblivion: Reports From a Sinking Society

by Thomas Frank  · 18 Jun 2018  · 182pp  · 55,234 words

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

by Thomas Frank  · 15 Mar 2016  · 316pp  · 87,486 words

The Meritocracy Myth

by Stephen J. McNamee  · 17 Jul 2013  · 440pp  · 108,137 words

The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order

by Benn Steil  · 14 May 2013  · 710pp  · 164,527 words

The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class

by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett  · 14 May 2017  · 550pp  · 89,316 words

Culture works: the political economy of culture

by Richard Maxwell  · 15 Jan 2001  · 268pp  · 112,708 words

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power

by Jacob Helberg  · 11 Oct 2021  · 521pp  · 118,183 words

Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex

by Rupert Darwall  · 2 Oct 2017  · 451pp  · 115,720 words

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

by George Packer  · 4 Mar 2014  · 559pp  · 169,094 words

The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy

by Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley  · 10 Jun 2013

Nine Crises: Fifty Years of Covering the British Economy From Devaluation to Brexit

by William Keegan  · 24 Jan 2019  · 309pp  · 85,584 words

This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain

by William Davies  · 28 Sep 2020  · 210pp  · 65,833 words

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation

by Carl Benedikt Frey  · 17 Jun 2019  · 626pp  · 167,836 words

Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality

by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell  · 23 May 2023

Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America

by Tamara Draut  · 4 Apr 2016  · 255pp  · 75,172 words

Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

by Eric Klinenberg  · 10 Sep 2018  · 281pp  · 83,505 words

It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear

by Gregg Easterbrook  · 20 Feb 2018  · 424pp  · 119,679 words

Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India

by Shashi Tharoor  · 1 Feb 2018  · 370pp  · 111,129 words

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era

by Gary Gerstle  · 14 Oct 2022  · 655pp  · 156,367 words

Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

by J. Bradford Delong  · 6 Apr 2020  · 593pp  · 183,240 words

The Cigarette: A Political History

by Sarah Milov  · 1 Oct 2019

To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise

by Bethany Moreton  · 15 May 2009  · 391pp  · 22,799 words

The Knowledge Economy

by Roberto Mangabeira Unger  · 19 Mar 2019  · 268pp  · 75,490 words

Open: The Story of Human Progress

by Johan Norberg  · 14 Sep 2020  · 505pp  · 138,917 words

Age of the City: Why Our Future Will Be Won or Lost Together

by Ian Goldin and Tom Lee-Devlin  · 21 Jun 2023  · 248pp  · 73,689 words

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson  · 15 May 2023  · 619pp  · 177,548 words

Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers

by Jason M. Barr  · 13 May 2024  · 292pp  · 107,998 words

Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace

by Matthew C. Klein  · 18 May 2020  · 339pp  · 95,270 words

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

by Malcolm Harris  · 14 Feb 2023  · 864pp  · 272,918 words

The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-Up in Oakland

by Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham  · 10 Jan 2023  · 498pp  · 184,761 words

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

by Sarah Jaffe  · 26 Jan 2021  · 490pp  · 153,455 words

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

by Daniel Immerwahr  · 19 Feb 2019

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America

by Victor Davis Hanson  · 15 Nov 2021  · 458pp  · 132,912 words

The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation

by Edward Glaeser and David Cutler  · 14 Sep 2021  · 735pp  · 165,375 words

Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge

by Ian Kumekawa  · 6 May 2025  · 422pp  · 112,638 words

The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory

by Andrew J. Bacevich  · 7 Jan 2020  · 254pp  · 68,133 words

Saving America's Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age

by Lizabeth Cohen  · 30 Sep 2019

The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World

by Ruchir Sharma  · 5 Jun 2016  · 566pp  · 163,322 words

Give People Money

by Annie Lowrey  · 10 Jul 2018  · 242pp  · 73,728 words

The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us

by Joel Kotkin  · 11 Apr 2016  · 565pp  · 122,605 words

The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction

by Jamie Woodcock and Mark Graham  · 17 Jan 2020  · 207pp  · 59,298 words

Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation

by Paris Marx  · 4 Jul 2022  · 295pp  · 81,861 words

Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century

by George Gilder  · 30 Apr 1981  · 590pp  · 153,208 words

The Warhol Economy

by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett  · 15 Jan 2020  · 320pp  · 90,115 words

Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

by Richard Beck  · 2 Sep 2024  · 715pp  · 212,449 words

World Cities and Nation States

by Greg Clark and Tim Moonen  · 19 Dec 2016

Work in the Future The Automation Revolution-Palgrave MacMillan (2019)

by Robert Skidelsky Nan Craig  · 15 Mar 2020

The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

by Mehrsa Baradaran  · 7 May 2024  · 470pp  · 158,007 words

Extreme Economies: Survival, Failure, Future – Lessons From the World’s Limits

by Richard Davies  · 4 Sep 2019  · 412pp  · 128,042 words

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

by Mark Blyth  · 24 Apr 2013  · 576pp  · 105,655 words

The Discovery of France

by Graham Robb  · 1 Jan 2007  · 740pp  · 161,563 words

The Future Is Asian

by Parag Khanna  · 5 Feb 2019  · 496pp  · 131,938 words

American Marxism

by Mark R. Levin  · 12 Jul 2021  · 314pp  · 88,524 words

The Economics of Inequality

by Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer  · 7 Jan 2015  · 165pp  · 45,129 words

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy

by Dani Rodrik  · 23 Dec 2010  · 356pp  · 103,944 words

When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of the Middle Kingdom

by Martin Jacques  · 12 Nov 2009  · 859pp  · 204,092 words

The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City

by Alan Ehrenhalt  · 23 Apr 2012  · 281pp  · 86,657 words

The Extreme Centre: A Warning

by Tariq Ali  · 22 Jan 2015  · 160pp  · 46,449 words

Does Capitalism Have a Future?

by Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian, Craig Calhoun, Stephen Hoye and Audible Studios  · 15 Nov 2013  · 238pp  · 73,121 words

Born in Flames

by Bench Ansfield  · 15 Aug 2025  · 366pp  · 138,787 words

The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990

by Jonathan Mahler  · 11 Aug 2025  · 559pp  · 164,804 words

Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World

by Branko Milanovic  · 23 Sep 2019

The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives

by Ernest Scheyder  · 30 Jan 2024  · 355pp  · 133,726 words

The Dream of Europe: Travels in the Twenty-First Century

by Geert Mak  · 27 Oct 2021  · 722pp  · 223,701 words

The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America

by John Fabian Witt  · 14 Oct 2025  · 735pp  · 279,360 words

Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy

by Quinn Slobodian  · 4 Apr 2023  · 360pp  · 107,124 words

The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It)

by Michael R. Strain  · 25 Feb 2020  · 98pp  · 27,609 words

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason

by William Davies  · 26 Feb 2019  · 349pp  · 98,868 words

Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain

by Fintan O'Toole  · 22 Jan 2018  · 200pp  · 64,329 words

The Politics of Pain

by Fintan O'Toole  · 2 Oct 2019

The Divided Nation: A History of Germany, 1918-1990

by Mary Fulbrook  · 14 Oct 1991  · 934pp  · 135,736 words

The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them

by Joseph E. Stiglitz  · 15 Mar 2015  · 409pp  · 125,611 words

Automating Inequality

by Virginia Eubanks  · 294pp  · 77,356 words

The Default Line: The Inside Story of People, Banks and Entire Nations on the Edge

by Faisal Islam  · 28 Aug 2013  · 475pp  · 155,554 words

Termites of the State: Why Complexity Leads to Inequality

by Vito Tanzi  · 28 Dec 2017

Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

by Wolfgang Streeck  · 1 Jan 2013  · 353pp  · 81,436 words

Against Everything: Essays

by Mark Greif  · 5 Sep 2016  · 319pp  · 103,707 words

Power at Ground Zero: Politics, Money, and the Remaking of Lower Manhattan

by Lynne B. Sagalyn  · 8 Sep 2016  · 1,797pp  · 390,698 words

A United Ireland: Why Unification Is Inevitable and How It Will Come About

by Kevin Meagher  · 15 Nov 2016

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles

by Fintan O'Toole  · 5 Mar 2020  · 385pp  · 121,550 words

How Asia Works

by Joe Studwell  · 1 Jul 2013  · 868pp  · 147,152 words

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

by Yascha Mounk  · 15 Feb 2018  · 497pp  · 123,778 words

When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor

by William Julius Wilson  · 1 Jan 1996  · 399pp  · 116,828 words

A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s

by Alwyn W. Turner  · 4 Sep 2013  · 1,013pp  · 302,015 words

The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World

by Rahm Emanuel  · 25 Feb 2020  · 212pp  · 69,846 words

Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back

by Guy Shrubsole  · 1 May 2019  · 505pp  · 133,661 words

Numbers Don't Lie: 71 Stories to Help Us Understand the Modern World

by Vaclav Smil  · 4 May 2021  · 252pp  · 60,959 words

Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia

by Adrian Shirk  · 15 Mar 2022  · 358pp  · 118,810 words

Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It

by Daniel Knowles  · 27 Mar 2023  · 278pp  · 91,332 words

Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be

by Diane Coyle  · 11 Oct 2021  · 305pp  · 75,697 words

China's Superbank

by Henry Sanderson and Michael Forsythe  · 26 Sep 2012

Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities

by Witold Rybczynski  · 9 Nov 2010  · 232pp  · 60,093 words

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect

by David Goodhart  · 7 Sep 2020  · 463pp  · 115,103 words

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety

by Gideon Rachman  · 1 Feb 2011  · 391pp  · 102,301 words

Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

by Darren McGarvey  · 2 Nov 2017  · 224pp  · 73,737 words

Who Rules the World?

by Noam Chomsky

Multicultural Cities: Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles

by Mohammed Abdul Qadeer  · 10 Mar 2016

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy

by Francis Fukuyama  · 29 Sep 2014  · 828pp  · 232,188 words

With Liberty and Dividends for All: How to Save Our Middle Class When Jobs Don't Pay Enough

by Peter Barnes  · 31 Jul 2014  · 151pp  · 38,153 words

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie  · 20 Jul 2020

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe

by Denis MacShane  · 14 Jul 2017  · 308pp  · 99,298 words

Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics

by Peter Geoghegan  · 2 Jan 2020  · 388pp  · 111,099 words

Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats

by Maya Goodfellow  · 5 Nov 2019  · 273pp  · 83,802 words

Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Politics and Society in Modern America)

by Louis Hyman  · 3 Jan 2011

The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain?

by Polly Toynbee and David Walker  · 6 Oct 2011  · 471pp  · 109,267 words

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze  · 31 Jul 2018  · 1,066pp  · 273,703 words

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice

by Jamie K. McCallum  · 15 Nov 2022  · 349pp  · 99,230 words

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel  · 12 Aug 2020  · 286pp  · 87,168 words

Making It Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men Who Blew Up the British Economy

by Iain Martin  · 11 Sep 2013  · 387pp  · 119,244 words

Global Financial Crisis

by Noah Berlatsky  · 19 Feb 2010

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth

by Michael Jacobs and Mariana Mazzucato  · 31 Jul 2016  · 370pp  · 102,823 words

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

by Brett Christophers  · 17 Nov 2020  · 614pp  · 168,545 words

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism

by Grace Blakeley  · 14 Oct 2020  · 82pp  · 24,150 words

Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism

by Ed West  · 19 Mar 2020  · 530pp  · 147,851 words

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made

by Gaia Vince  · 19 Oct 2014  · 505pp  · 147,916 words

Green and Prosperous Land: A Blueprint for Rescuing the British Countryside

by Dieter Helm  · 7 Mar 2019  · 348pp  · 102,438 words

Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing

by John Boughton  · 14 May 2018  · 325pp  · 89,374 words

Austerity Britain: 1945-51

by David Kynaston  · 12 May 2008  · 870pp  · 259,362 words

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth

by Chris Smaje  · 14 Aug 2020  · 375pp  · 105,586 words

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

by David S. Landes  · 14 Sep 1999  · 1,060pp  · 265,296 words

After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405

by John Darwin  · 5 Feb 2008  · 650pp  · 203,191 words

The Great Race: The Global Quest for the Car of the Future

by Levi Tillemann  · 20 Jan 2015  · 431pp  · 107,868 words

Men Without Work

by Nicholas Eberstadt  · 4 Sep 2016  · 126pp  · 37,081 words

The Rich and the Rest of Us

by Tavis Smiley  · 15 Feb 2012  · 181pp  · 50,196 words

The Classical School

by Callum Williams  · 19 May 2020  · 288pp  · 89,781 words

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America

by Alec MacGillis  · 16 Mar 2021  · 426pp  · 136,925 words

Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (And How It Got That Way)

by Rachel Slade  · 9 Jan 2024  · 392pp  · 106,044 words

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom

by Grace Blakeley  · 11 Mar 2024  · 371pp  · 137,268 words

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian  · 7 Oct 2024  · 336pp  · 104,899 words

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car

by Anthony M. Townsend  · 15 Jun 2020  · 362pp  · 97,288 words

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide

by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever  · 19 Apr 2021  · 366pp  · 110,374 words

This Land: The Struggle for the Left

by Owen Jones  · 23 Sep 2020  · 387pp  · 123,237 words

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

by Harsha Walia  · 9 Feb 2021

GDP: The World’s Most Powerful Formula and Why It Must Now Change

by Ehsan Masood  · 4 Mar 2021  · 303pp  · 74,206 words

Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

by Sam Quinones  · 20 Apr 2015  · 433pp  · 129,636 words

The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy

by Peter Temin  · 17 Mar 2017  · 273pp  · 87,159 words

India's Long Road

by Vijay Joshi  · 21 Feb 2017

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism

by Peter Frase  · 10 Mar 2015  · 121pp  · 36,908 words

The new village green: living light, living local, living large

by Stephen Morris  · 1 Sep 2007  · 289pp  · 112,697 words

Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover

by Katrina Vanden Heuvel and William Greider  · 9 Jan 2009  · 278pp  · 82,069 words

Let them eat junk: how capitalism creates hunger and obesity

by Robert Albritton  · 31 Mar 2009  · 273pp  · 93,419 words

The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs, and Incomes

by Phillip Brown, Hugh Lauder and David Ashton  · 3 Nov 2010  · 209pp  · 80,086 words

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities

by Eric Kaufmann  · 24 Oct 2018  · 691pp  · 203,236 words

Adam Smith: Father of Economics

by Jesse Norman  · 30 Jun 2018

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil  · 25 Jun 2024

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger

by Matthew Yglesias  · 14 Sep 2020

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze  · 15 Nov 2021  · 561pp  · 138,158 words

Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right

by Michael Brooks  · 23 Apr 2020  · 88pp  · 26,706 words

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal

by George Packer  · 14 Jun 2021  · 173pp  · 55,328 words

Worn: A People's History of Clothing

by Sofi Thanhauser  · 25 Jan 2022  · 592pp  · 133,460 words

The Economists' Hour: How the False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society

by Binyamin Appelbaum  · 4 Sep 2019  · 614pp  · 174,226 words

After the New Economy: The Binge . . . And the Hangover That Won't Go Away

by Doug Henwood  · 9 May 2005  · 306pp  · 78,893 words

Wall Street: How It Works And for Whom

by Doug Henwood  · 30 Aug 1998  · 586pp  · 159,901 words

This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook

by Extinction Rebellion  · 12 Jun 2019  · 138pp  · 40,525 words

The Gated City (Kindle Single)

by Ryan Avent  · 30 Aug 2011  · 112pp  · 30,160 words

The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class

by Kees Van der Pijl  · 2 Jun 2014  · 572pp  · 134,335 words

To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750-2010

by T M Devine  · 25 Aug 2011

The Rise of the Network Society

by Manuel Castells  · 31 Aug 1996  · 843pp  · 223,858 words

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution

by David Harvey  · 3 Apr 2012  · 206pp  · 9,776 words

The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream

by Tyler Cowen  · 27 Feb 2017  · 287pp  · 82,576 words

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century

by George Friedman  · 30 Jul 2008  · 278pp  · 88,711 words

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages

by Carlota Pérez  · 1 Jan 2002

A People's History of Poverty in America

by Stephen Pimpare  · 11 Nov 2008  · 468pp  · 123,823 words

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

by Deirdre N. McCloskey  · 15 Nov 2011  · 1,205pp  · 308,891 words

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order

by Richard Haass  · 10 Jan 2017  · 286pp  · 82,970 words

Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

by Rachel Sherman  · 21 Aug 2017  · 360pp  · 113,429 words

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass

by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri  · 6 May 2019  · 346pp  · 97,330 words

Markets, State, and People: Economics for Public Policy

by Diane Coyle  · 14 Jan 2020  · 384pp  · 108,414 words

Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration

by Kent E. Calder  · 28 Apr 2019

Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis

by Tao Leigh. Goffe  · 14 Mar 2025  · 441pp  · 122,013 words

The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age

by Roger Bootle  · 4 Sep 2019  · 374pp  · 111,284 words

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company That Addicted America

by Beth Macy  · 4 Mar 2019  · 441pp  · 124,798 words

Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities

by Vaclav Smil  · 23 Sep 2019

Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order

by Bruno Maçães  · 1 Feb 2019  · 281pp  · 69,107 words

Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America

by Beth Macy  · 6 Oct 2025  · 373pp  · 97,653 words

Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

by Patrick McGee  · 13 May 2025  · 377pp  · 138,306 words

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

by Anne Case and Angus Deaton  · 17 Mar 2020  · 421pp  · 110,272 words

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

by Marc Levinson  · 1 Jan 2006  · 477pp  · 135,607 words

Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies

by Judith Stein  · 30 Apr 2010  · 497pp  · 143,175 words

Explore Everything

by Bradley Garrett  · 7 Oct 2013  · 273pp  · 76,786 words

Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle

by Jamie Woodcock  · 17 Jun 2019  · 236pp  · 62,158 words

After Europe

by Ivan Krastev  · 7 May 2017  · 100pp  · 31,338 words

Panderer to Power

by Frederick Sheehan  · 21 Oct 2009  · 435pp  · 127,403 words

The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won

by Victor Davis Hanson  · 16 Oct 2017  · 908pp  · 262,808 words

City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

by Catie Marron  · 11 Apr 2016  · 195pp  · 58,462 words

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters

by Diane Coyle  · 21 Feb 2011  · 523pp  · 111,615 words

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

by Charles Eisenstein  · 11 Jul 2011  · 448pp  · 142,946 words

The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead

by David Callahan  · 1 Jan 2004  · 452pp  · 110,488 words

Straphanger

by Taras Grescoe  · 8 Sep 2011  · 428pp  · 134,832 words

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income

by Guy Standing  · 3 May 2017  · 307pp  · 82,680 words

This Is London: Life and Death in the World City

by Ben Judah  · 28 Jan 2016  · 385pp  · 119,859 words

Imagining India

by Nandan Nilekani  · 25 Nov 2008  · 777pp  · 186,993 words

Borrow: The American Way of Debt

by Louis Hyman  · 24 Jan 2012  · 251pp  · 76,128 words

Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles

by Ruchir Sharma  · 8 Apr 2012  · 411pp  · 114,717 words

Why Orwell Matters

by Christopher Hitchens  · 1 Jan 2002  · 184pp  · 54,833 words

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages

by Annelise Orleck  · 27 Feb 2018  · 382pp  · 107,150 words

Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life

by Richard Florida  · 28 Jun 2009  · 325pp  · 73,035 words

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?

by Thomas Geoghegan  · 20 Sep 2011  · 364pp  · 104,697 words

Broke: How to Survive the Middle Class Crisis

by David Boyle  · 15 Jan 2014  · 367pp  · 108,689 words

Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy

by Benjamin Barber  · 20 Apr 2010  · 454pp  · 139,350 words

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity

by Joseph E. Stiglitz  · 28 Jan 2020  · 408pp  · 108,985 words

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara  · 8 Jul 2019

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956

by Anne Applebaum  · 30 Oct 2012  · 934pp  · 232,651 words

Competition Demystified

by Bruce C. Greenwald  · 31 Aug 2016  · 482pp  · 125,973 words

Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?

by David G. Blanchflower  · 12 Apr 2021  · 566pp  · 160,453 words

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization

by Michael O’sullivan  · 28 May 2019  · 756pp  · 120,818 words

Killing Hope: Us Military and Cia Interventions Since World War 2

by William Blum  · 15 Jan 2003

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond  · 1 Mar 2016  · 444pp  · 138,781 words

Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution

by Beth Gardiner  · 18 Apr 2019  · 353pp  · 106,704 words

American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History

by Casey Michel  · 23 Nov 2021  · 466pp  · 116,165 words

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

by Steven W. Thrasher  · 1 Aug 2022  · 361pp  · 110,233 words

How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement

by Fredrik Deboer  · 4 Sep 2023  · 211pp  · 78,547 words

The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice

by Fredrik Deboer  · 3 Aug 2020  · 236pp  · 77,546 words

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma

by Mustafa Suleyman  · 4 Sep 2023  · 444pp  · 117,770 words

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

by Kurt Andersen  · 14 Sep 2020  · 486pp  · 150,849 words

In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City's Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis

by Clifton Hood  · 1 Nov 2016  · 641pp  · 182,927 words

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown

by Philip Mirowski  · 24 Jun 2013  · 662pp  · 180,546 words

Chomsky on Mis-Education

by Noam Chomsky  · 24 Mar 2000

The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics

by John B. Judis  · 11 Sep 2016  · 177pp  · 50,167 words

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives

by Tim Harford  · 3 Oct 2016  · 349pp  · 95,972 words

Trust: The Social Virtue and the Creation of Prosperity

by Francis Fukuyama  · 1 Jan 1995  · 585pp  · 165,304 words

Propaganda and the Public Mind

by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian  · 31 Mar 2015

Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy

by Chris Hayes  · 11 Jun 2012  · 285pp  · 86,174 words

How Will Capitalism End?

by Wolfgang Streeck  · 8 Nov 2016  · 424pp  · 115,035 words

The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives

by Sasha Abramsky  · 15 Mar 2013  · 406pp  · 113,841 words

Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders

by Jason L. Riley  · 14 May 2008  · 196pp  · 53,627 words

The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

by David Graeber  · 13 Aug 2012  · 284pp  · 92,387 words

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

by Robert D. Putnam  · 10 Mar 2015  · 459pp  · 123,220 words

Death of the Liberal Class

by Chris Hedges  · 14 May 2010  · 422pp  · 89,770 words

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class

by Owen Jones  · 14 Jul 2011  · 317pp  · 101,475 words

The Trouble With Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure

by Shawn Micallef  · 10 Jun 2014  · 104pp  · 34,784 words

How the World Works

by Noam Chomsky, Arthur Naiman and David Barsamian  · 13 Sep 2011  · 489pp  · 111,305 words

The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

by Robert J. Gordon  · 12 Jan 2016  · 1,104pp  · 302,176 words

The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010

by Selina Todd  · 9 Apr 2014  · 525pp  · 153,356 words

Reskilling America: Learning to Labor in the Twenty-First Century

by Katherine S. Newman and Hella Winston  · 18 Apr 2016  · 338pp  · 92,465 words

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

by Parag Khanna  · 18 Apr 2016  · 497pp  · 144,283 words

The River Cottage Fish Book: The Definitive Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Fish and Shellfish

by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall  · 19 Nov 2007

Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement

by Amy Lang and Daniel Lang/levitsky  · 11 Jun 2012  · 537pp  · 99,778 words

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism

by Joyce Appleby  · 22 Dec 2009  · 540pp  · 168,921 words

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

by Anand Giridharadas  · 27 Aug 2018  · 296pp  · 98,018 words

The Great Depression: A Diary

by Benjamin Roth, James Ledbetter and Daniel B. Roth  · 21 Jul 2009  · 408pp  · 94,311 words

Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone

by Eric Klinenberg  · 1 Jan 2012  · 291pp  · 88,879 words

Empire of Guns

by Priya Satia  · 10 Apr 2018  · 927pp  · 216,549 words

The End of Policing

by Alex S. Vitale  · 9 Oct 2017  · 318pp  · 82,452 words

The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy

by Stephanie Kelton  · 8 Jun 2020  · 338pp  · 104,684 words

The Rough Guide to England

by Rough Guides  · 29 Mar 2018

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All

by Michael Shellenberger  · 28 Jun 2020

The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy

by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter  · 14 Sep 2020  · 627pp  · 89,295 words

The Abandonment of the West

by Michael Kimmage  · 21 Apr 2020  · 378pp  · 121,495 words

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000

by Paul Kennedy  · 15 Jan 1989  · 1,477pp  · 311,310 words

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

by Ben Tarnoff  · 13 Jun 2022  · 234pp  · 67,589 words

Hacking Capitalism

by Söderberg, Johan; Söderberg, Johan;

Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists

by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus  · 10 Mar 2009  · 454pp  · 107,163 words

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe  · 3 Oct 2022  · 689pp  · 134,457 words