Magisterial ... [Cassidy] sheds light on the feedback loop between theory and practice ... Deftly glossed ... Cassidy could not have predicted Donald Trump’s particular brand of tariff inanity, but he comes uncannily close when he speculates that globalism may be on its last legs ... His rewarding book provides an impressively lucid guide to a fascinating array of attempts to do so ... Subtle and sensitive.
An expansive history of capitalism that places less emphasis on economic abstractions like perfectly competitive markets and draws attention instead to how often capitalist systems have fallen short ... The most haunting figure in this book is an outlier: Thomas Carlyle, the 19th-century Scottish essayist, whose assumptions about both capitalism and humanity were so dark that he made no room for the possibility of social progress.
Unexpectedly lively ... In Cassidy’s hands, rarely has what Thomas Carlyle called the 'dismal science' been so jaunty. Yes, Capitalism and its Critics is filled with Kuznets curves, post-endogenous growth theory and Gini coefficients; but I predict it’ll become the intelligent beach read of the summer ... Over 28 punchy, rigorous yet engagingly peopled chapters, Cassidy not only explains the economic theories of Marx, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Milton Friedman—people of whom no smart person has any business being ignorant—but introduces us to a fabulous cast of lesser-known characters ...
Those unexcited by phrases such as 'global average GDP per capita' needn’t worry. Cassidy is superb at bringing such issues to dramatic life. He offers gripping analyses of socialist communes, slavery, imperialism and monetarism; he takes us to the heart of such topical questions as whether tariffs are folly, as laissez-faire orthodoxy suggests, or essential to making America great again, as Donald Trump insists.
To normal people, economic theory is soul-crushing at the best of times. But Cassidy makes it all digestible by weaving together, in each chapter, the biography of each of his subjects with their key critique of capitalism, thus humanising otherwise dry debates about economic theory ... Cassidy’s range is impressive ... Yet if the individual chapters are engaging and informative, it is sometimes harder to say how they fit together.
Dense with information, free of jargon, and a powerful argument against an increasingly unsustainable economic system ... Sounds a subtle theme in his characterization of capitalism as it has developed over the past four centuries or so: It has always relied on compulsion.
Sweeping ... Offers a deft, thorough reading of Marx ... Cassidy’s masterful synthesis of history and biography serves to demonstrate that capitalism is in a permanent state of change ... The result is a unique and invigorating view of capitalism’s history.
