PositiveThe New Republic...this is a serious book ... It is also a long book: 577 pages of closely printed text and seventy-seven pages of notes ... The English translation by Arthur Goldhammer reads very well ... Piketty’s strategy is to start with a panoramic reading of the data across space and time, and then work out from there. He and a group of associates...have labored hard to compile an enormous database that is still being extended and refined. It provides the empirical foundation for Piketty’s argument.This is Piketty’s main point, and his new and powerful contribution to an old topic: as long as the rate of return exceeds the rate of growth, the income and wealth of the rich will grow faster than the typical income from work ... The mechanism is a little more complicated than Piketty’s book lets on.