Capitalism

“A seminal work that explains how capitalism started, evolved, and expanded over the last several hundred years. It’s quotable because the details are so rich and interesting, especially how capitalism started with merchants in a little known area called Aden.” —Forbes

“Capitalism is a learned, formidable and vivid story. Its grand synthesis will engage not only general readers, but thousands of specialists… Readers around the world will study and ponder this monumental work of history, agreeing and arguing with it, all the while affirming its generational importance, for decades to come.” — Marcus Rediker, The New York Times

“Beckert’s bravura new intellectual history sets the record straight… Panoramic… While scholars have illuminated bits and pieces of this immense narrative, Beckert’s massive volume brings it together with impeccable authority and perspicacity… Each chapter offers an abundance of characters and arguments, interpreting the economic and social realities we share, commonalities of revolution and change… An achievement that will endure alongside Tony Judt’s Postwar and Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, whose influence undergirds Beckert’s book.” —The Boston Globe

“Vast in scale, cogent in delivery, accessible enough to accommodate a non-economist like me, [Capitalism] is that rare kind of project that can be described — unironically, no less — as magisterial.” —NPR.org

“Supremely ambitious, an insightful and well-illustrated history by the Harvard historian who has been a pioneer in the creation of new narratives exploring how an ever-changing capitalism has been a socially and culturally rooted phenomenon. At well over a thousand pages, Beckert’s volume offers a synthesis and occasional recasting of almost everything we have learned about the history of capitalism, and not just in the closely studied societies bordering the North Atlantic . . . Beckert . . . [writes] eloquently of the panics, booms, and busts that became a characteristic of world capitalism from the early nineteenth century through our own time. But the expansion of trade and production remains at the heart of his book . . . But whatever its fate, Beckert’s capacious volume provides a new generation of capitalists and anti-capitalists with plenty of precedents for whatever world they come to imagine.” —Jacobin

“An early contender for a Pulitzer, Sven Beckert’s readable, never dull doorstop of how more people came to believe in the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” —Chicago Tribune, Fall Books Preview

“Epic . . . An unparalleled work of scholarship that is also a joy to read, this is a monumental achievement.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A clarity that Karl Marx could only long for . . . Beckert’s agile account marches through the emergence of mercantilism and the invention of double-entry bookkeeping and proceeds through plantation and wage slavery, colonialism and postcolonialism, and a managerial/bureaucratic golden age . . . A comprehensive and up-to-date history, essential.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“Magisterial in scope and ambition, Sven Beckert’s Capitalism is a dazzling global history of the forces that have shaped—and continue to shape—our world. A true tour de force.” —Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at Oxford University and author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Sven Beckert is one of the world’s preeminent scholars on the history of capitalism, and in this monumentally important single-volume global history, simply titled Capitalism, he upends the deeply embedded notion that capitalism was born as a purely Western phenomenon. Instead, he powerfully demonstrates how its ascendancy over the last six centuries depended both on the genius and vibrancy of interconnected communities and on brutally exploitative systems, including slavery. Drawing on astonishing research across multiple continents, Beckert’s new book is a landmark achievement that reorients our understanding of capitalism as an evolving, ever-contested human creation. It is certain to become a canonical work of history.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

“It’s hard to think of any other contemporary historian who could have written a new history of capitalism of such global scope and impressive scale. Capitalism promises to be an instant classic that will last.” —Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy

“Sven Beckert has written what will surely become a key reference on the global history of modern capitalism. A monumental book, a must-read.” —Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“In this magnificent history of capitalism, Sven Beckert presents an exceptionally illuminating account of the thousand years of what he calls (correctly, I think) ‘the most impactful revolution the world has ever seen.’ Beginning with the rapid expansion of trade and capital around the port of Aden in the twelfth century, the gripping history comes all the way to our time, telling us about commerce, technology and innovations, but also about people’s lives, worries and questions. One of the striking features of this splendid book is the avoidance of Eurocentrism in telling the story of capitalism. The global history, in this case, is truly global.” —Amartya Sen, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics