A Brief History of Equality

"One of the big challenges of our age is economic inequality , a topic we’ve been tracking since Five Books started more than a decade ago. Three economists wrote a pioneering paper with data on inequality over the long-term : Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Tony Atkinson (1944-2017). Piketty’s doorstopper books have since become bestsellers but his latest, A Brief History of Equality , is short and so a nice introduction to his approach. As some commentators have pointed out, it’s also a little more optimistic, which we probably all need right now. If you’re just interested in the data, the 2022 World Inequality Report will be out as a book in July , though you can already access it here . The populist politicians who find a convenient scapegoat to blame for everything and whose policies normally make problems worse are well covered this spring. In Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro , FT journalist Richard Lapper tracks the phenomenon in Brazil where former military officer Jair Bolsonaro is in power. For the US, American political historian Julian Zelizer has edited a volume with a range of contributors: The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment . Also new out this spring is a biography of Xi Jinping by Alfred Chan (including details such as at what age baby Jinping was weaned). If you’re looking for a general survey of authoritarian leaders around the world, The Age of the Strongman by Gideon Rachman , the FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist, looks at a number of them, starting with Vladimir Putin. All in all, it’s a good time to reflect on liberal democracy, and Francis Fukuyama has a new, short, book out: Liberalism and its Discontents , addressing both what it is and some of the challenges it faces. He’s a clear thinker and also talked about what other books to read about liberal democracy in our most recent interview with him."