In this compelling dialogue, two of the world's most influential thinkers reflect on the value of equality and debate what citizens and governments should do to narrow the gaps that separate us. Ranging across economics, philosophy, history, and current affairs, Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel consider how far we have come in achieving greater equality. At the same time, they confront head-on the extreme divides that remain in wealth, income, power, and status nationally and globally.

What can be done at a time of deep political instability and environmental crisis? Piketty and Sandel agree on much: more inclusive investment in health and education, higher progressive taxation, curbing the political power of the rich and the overreach of markets. But how far and how fast can we push? Should we prioritize material or social change? What are the prospects for any change at all with nationalist forces resurgent? How should the left relate to values like patriotism and local solidarity where they collide with the challenges of mass migration and global climate change?

To see Piketty and Sandel grapple with these and other problems is to glimpse new possibilities for change and justice but also the stubborn truth that progress towards greater equality never comes quickly or without deep social conflict and political struggle.

A New York Times #1 Bestseller
An Amazon #1 Bestseller
A Wall Street Journal #1 Bestseller
A USA Today Bestseller
A Sunday Times Bestseller
A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century
Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Winner of the British Academy Medal
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award

It seems safe to say that Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the magnum opus of the French economist Thomas Piketty, will be the most important economics book of the year--and maybe of the decade.
--Paul Krugman, New York Times

The book aims to revolutionize the way people think about the economic history of the past two centuries. It may well manage the feat.
--The Economist

Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an intellectual tour de force, a triumph of economic history over the theoretical, mathematical modeling that has come to dominate the economics profession in recent years.
--Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post

Piketty has written an extraordinarily important book...In its scale and sweep it brings us back to the founders of political economy.
--Martin Wolf, Financial Times

A sweeping account of rising inequality...Piketty has written a book that nobody interested in a defining issue of our era can afford to ignore.
--John Cassidy, New Yorker

Stands a fair chance of becoming the most influential work of economics yet published in our young century. It is the most important study of inequality in over fifty years.
--Timothy Shenk, The Nation

Thomas Piketty's powerful and bestselling Capital and Ideology is now available in this accessible and richly illustrated full-color graphic novel format.

Praised by Piketty himself as a magnificent adaptation of his original book, this graphic novel adaptation is perfect for anyone looking to understand the wealth gap and why society is the way it is today.

Claire Alet and Benjamin Adam make the original work's ideas more accessible through the addition of a family saga. Jules, the main character, is born at the end of the 19th century. He is a person of private means, a privileged figure representative of a profoundly unequal society obsessed with property.

He, his family circle, and his descendants will experience the evolution of wealth and society. Eight generations of his family serve as a connecting thread running through the book, all the way up to Léa, a young woman today, who discovers the family secret at the root of their inheritance.

The book concludes with six compelling proposals for participatory socialism in the 21st century.

Friendly and approachable illustrations by cartoonist and children's book author Benjamin Adam are easy to understand without diluting the subject matter. The material is adapted expertly by Claire Alet, a former journalist at Alternatives Economiques.

The most important economics book of the year―and maybe of the decade. --Paul Krugman, New York Times, on Capital in the Twenty-First Century

A bestselling economist's history of inequality and guide to a more just, sustainable world, distilled into an engaging and accessible pocket-sized text.

In this unique work, Thomas Piketty presents a synthesis of his historical and comparative research on inequality. He challenges the idea that there could be natural inequalities and shows that the march toward equality has always depended on political and social struggles, addressing diverse topics such as:

• education,
• inheritance,
• the climate crisis,
• the taxation of wealth, and
• gender disparities.

Adapted from Piketty's 2022 lecture at the Musée du Quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Nature, Culture, and Inequality makes his important argument available to a wider audience for the first time. With a clear, conversational tone, he provides a strong foundation of data and concrete examples of how we can continue to level the playing field.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Public Books Best Book of the Year

A profound and optimistic call to action and reflection. For Piketty, the arc of history is long, but it does bend toward equality. There is nothing automatic about it, however: as citizens, we must be ready to fight for it, and constantly (re)invent the myriad of institutions that will bring it about. This book is here to help.
--Esther Duflo

A sustained argument for why we should be optimistic about human progress...[Piketty] has laid out a plan that is smart, thoughtful, and motivated by admirable political convictions.
--Gary Gerstle, Washington Post

Thomas Piketty helped put inequality at the center of political debate. Now, he offers an ambitious program for addressing it...This is political economy on a grand scale, a starting point for debate about the future of progressive politics.
--Michael J. Sandel, author of The Tyranny of Merit

[Piketty] argues that we're on a trajectory of greater, not less, equality and lays out his prescriptions for remedying our current corrosive wealth disparities.
--David Marchese, New York Times Magazine

It's easy to be pessimistic these days. We know that inequality has increased dramatically over the past two generations. Its ravages are increasingly impossible to ignore. But the grand sweep of history gives us reasons for hope. In this short and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress, the world's leading economist of inequality shows that over the centuries we have been moving, fitfully and inconsistently but inexorably, toward greater equality.

Thomas Piketty guides us through the seismic movements that have made the modern world: the birth of capitalism, the age of revolution, imperialism, slavery, two world wars, and the building of the welfare state. He shows that through it all, societies have moved toward a more just distribution of income and assets, reducing racial and gender inequalities and offering greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship. To keep moving, he argues, we need to commit to legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality, while resisting the temptations of cultural separatism. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people. We know we can do better. But do we dare?

A New York Times Bestseller
An NPR Best Book of the Year

The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system.

Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.

Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity.

Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new participatory socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

A chronicle of recent events that have shaken the world, from the author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

What makes this manifesto noteworthy is that it comes from . . . an economist who gained his reputation as a researcher with vaguely left-of-center sensibilities but was far from a radical. Yet the times are such . . . that even honest moderates are driven to radical remedies.--Robert Kuttner, New York Times

As a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde, world-renowned economist Thomas Piketty has documented the rise and fall of Trump, the drama of Brexit, Emmanuel Macron's ascendance to the French presidency, the unfolding of a global pandemic, and much else besides, always from the perspective of his fight for a more equitable world. This collection brings together those articles and is prefaced by an extended introductory essay, in which Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hypercapitalism that defines our current economic ideology. These essays offer a first draft of history from one of the world's leading economists and public figures, detailing the struggle against inequalities and tax evasion, in favor of a federalist Europe and a globalization more respectful of work and the environment.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Public Books Best Book of the Year

An opportunity for readers to see Piketty bring his larger argument about the origins of inequality and his program for fighting it into high relief.
--Nicholas Lemann, New York Times

The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. A perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books.

It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the grand sweep of history gives us reasons to be optimistic. Over the centuries, he shows, we have been moving toward greater equality.

Piketty guides us with elegance and concision through the great movements that have made the modern world for better and worse: the growth of capitalism, revolutions, imperialism, slavery, wars, and the building of the welfare state. It's a history of violence and social struggle, punctuated by regression and disaster. But through it all, Piketty shows, human societies have moved fitfully toward a more just distribution of income and assets, a reduction of racial and gender inequalities, and greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship. Our rough march forward is political and ideological, an endless fight against injustice. To keep moving, Piketty argues, we need to learn and commit to what works, to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality. At the same time, we need to resist historical amnesia and the temptations of cultural separatism and intellectual compartmentalization. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people. We know we can do better, Piketty concludes. The past shows us how. The future is up to us.

A New York Times #1 Bestseller
An Amazon #1 Bestseller
A Wall Street Journal #1 Bestseller
A USA Today Bestseller
A Sunday Times Bestseller
A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century
Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Winner of the British Academy Medal
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.

A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

-Piketty unleashed on real-time economics is a revelation.- -- Guardian

Thomas Piketty's work has proved that unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. Without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands. For years, this critical challenge to democracy has been the focus of Piketty's monthly newspaper columns, which pierce the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath. Why Save the Bankers? brings together selected columns from the period bookended by the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. In crystalline prose, Piketty examines a wide range of topics, and along the way he decodes the European Union's economic troubles, weighs in on oligarchy in the United States, wonders whether debts actually need to be paid back, and discovers surprising lessons about inequality by examining the career of Steve Jobs. Coursing with insight and flashes of wit, these brief essays offer a view of recent history through the eyes of one of the most influential economic thinkers of our time.
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-Anyone with an interest in politics, monetary policy, or international diplomacy will get a kick out of Piketty's clear discussion.- -- Shelf Awareness

-If you have been influenced by Piketty's landmark work on inequality, make sure to read this next.- -- Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything

A chronicle of recent events that have shaken the world, from the author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Praise for Time for Socialism:

Lively, thought-provoking, grounded in facts, and resolutely optimistic--these essays grapple with the big questions of our time, from the rise of Trumpism and Brexit, to gender inequality and wealth taxation.--Gabriel Zucman, University of California, Berkeley

Praise for Capital in the Twenty-First Century:

Piketty [is] arguably the world's leading expert on income and wealth inequality.--Paul Krugman, New York Times

Piketty has emerged as a rock star of the policy-intellectual world. . . . But make no mistake, his work richly deserves all the attention it is receiving.--Lawrence H. Summers, Democracy

As a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde, world-renowned economist Thomas Piketty has documented the rise and fall of Trump, the drama of Brexit, Emmanuel Macron's ascendance to the French presidency, the unfolding of a global pandemic, and much else besides, always from the perspective of his fight for a more equitable world. This collection brings together those articles and is prefaced by an extended introductory essay, in which Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hypercapitalism that defines our current economic ideology. These essays offer a first draft of history from one of the world's leading economists and public figures, detailing the struggle against inequalities and tax evasion, in favor of a federalist Europe and a globalization more respectful of work and the environment.

Thomas Piketty--whose Capital in the Twenty-First Century pushed inequality to the forefront of public debate--wrote The Economics of Inequality as an introduction to the conceptual and factual background necessary for interpreting changes in economic inequality over time. This concise text has established itself as an indispensable guide for students and general readers in France, where it has been regularly updated and revised. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer, The Economics of Inequality now appears in English for the first time.

Piketty begins by explaining how inequality evolves and how economists measure it. In subsequent chapters, he explores variances in income and ownership of capital and the variety of policies used to reduce these gaps. Along the way, with characteristic clarity and precision, he introduces key ideas about the relationship between labor and capital, the effects of different systems of taxation, the distinction between historical and political time, the impact of education and technological change, the nature of capital markets, the role of unions, and apparent tensions between the pursuit of efficiency and the pursuit of fairness.

Succinct, accessible, and authoritative, this is the ideal place to start for those who want to understand the fundamental issues at the heart of one of the most pressing concerns in contemporary economics and politics.

A landmark in contemporary social science, this pioneering work by Thomas Piketty explains the facts and dynamics of income inequality in France in the twentieth century. On its publication in French in 2001, it helped launch the international program led by Piketty and others to explore the grand patterns and causes of global inequality--research that has since transformed public debate. Appearing here in English for the first time, this stunning achievement will take its place alongside Capital in the Twenty-First Century as a modern classic of economic analysis.

Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century is essential in part because of Piketty's unprecedented efforts to uncover, untangle, and present in clear form data about patterns in tax and inheritance in France dating back to 1900. But it is also an exceptional work of analysis, tracking and explaining with Piketty's characteristically lucid prose the effects of political conflict, war, and social change on the economic pressures and public policies that determined the lives of millions. A work of unusual intellectual power and ambition, Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth Century is a vital resource for anyone concerned with the economic, political, and social history of France, and it is central to ongoing debates about social justice, inequality, taxation, and the evolution of capitalism around the world.

Thomas Piketty, especialista en desigualdad económica, apuesta por un mundo que avanza hacia la igualdad.

El camino hacia la igualdad es fruto de luchas y rebeliones contra la injusticia, y resultado de un proceso de aprendizaje de medidas institucionales y sistemas legales, sociales, fiscales y educativos que nos permitan hacer de la igualdad una realidad duradera. Desafortunadamente, este proceso a menudo se ve debilitado por la amnesia histórica, el nacionalismo intelectual y la compartimentación del conocimiento.

Thomas Piketty, economista francés y especialista en desigualdad económica, se dirige a un amplio público y presenta una síntesis que trasciende las fronteras nacionales y disciplinarias. El autor destaca una dimensión optimista porque, tal y como argumenta, hay un movimiento profundamente arraigado que conduce a una mayor igualdad.

An acclaimed economist's observations on four years of events that have shaped the world

In this new volume of essays, renowned economist Thomas Piketty takes measure of the world since 2020: leaders grappling with the aftershocks of the global pandemic; politics shifting rightward in France and elsewhere; and wars breaking out and escalating, from Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the conflict in Israel and Gaza. These essays are Piketty's vivid first draft of history--on the rise of China, the climate crisis, income and taxation, discrimination, and beyond--as well as a blueprint for achieving equity in our rapidly changing global landscape. Despite the gathering clouds, Piketty continues to find reasons for hope.