RaveCeasefire MagazineIn terms of accessibility...the book is handsomely written and translated, with a flowing prose in which Piketty liberally marshalls literary references, from Honore de Balzac to Jane Austen, to illustrate his arguments, the text does become rather repetitive and congested with too many asides and caveats. This minor quibble aside, however, there is no reason why thegeneral reader cannot appreciate the intellectual delights on offer ... Of course, that this is hardly news; rather, what gives the book’s intellectual thrust its potent freshness is not so much its arguments or conclusions, but the fact that Piketty has analysed data going back to the year 1700 and \'proved\' that inequality is reaching extreme, dangerous and unjust levels, particularly when it comes to the top 1% and, even more so, the top 0.1% of the global population ... Piketty mentions that in previous centuries extreme inequality of wealth was almost considered as an acceptable condition of civilisation...In significant measure, this is still the case today, except that the division is now global: people in rich countries live lives of luxury – despite the financial crash – at the expense of poor countries and their cheap labour. And yet, this question of cheap labour in poor countries is one that Piketty does not address at all, surely the weakest point of an otherwise solid argument ... That caveat aside, however, Piketty deserves huge credit for an epic and groundbreaking study of national inequalities, which deserves to be read by everyone.
