Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
    The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
    The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
    Audiobook17 hours

    The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century

    Written by Walter Scheidel

    Narrated by Joel Richards

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.

    Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling-mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues-have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 10, 2017
    ISBN9781541484139

    Related to The Great Leveler

    Related audiobooks

    Crime & Violence For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Woke: The Oldest Profession

      Nov 25, 2021

      WHAT HAS LED TO THE TRIUMPH OF WOKE? The suddenness and swiftness of the victory mean that we naturally turn for an explanation to the New Media — and to Twitter in particular. It’s Twitter which orchestrates the “pile-on” that delivers summary justi

      5 min read

    • Article

      In Memoir, Nikki Haley Hammers White House Team But Pledges Allegiance To Trump

      Nov 11, 2019

      In With All Due Respect, the former U.N. ambassador says Trump's ex-Chief of Staff John Kelly and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked her to help them "save the country" from the president.

      5 min read

    • Article

      A World In Motion

      Aug 26, 2022

      A World In Motion
      12 min read

    • Article

      Michael Hiltzik: America Is Falling Out Of Love With Billionaires, And It's About Time

      Feb 1, 2019

      Our emerging political debate over taxing the rich seems to be getting bogged down in details - how high a tax rate, should we tax income or wealth, etc., etc. But this fixation on nuts and bolts is obscuring what may be the most important aspect of

      5 min read

    • Article

      Jonah Goldberg: Pandemic And Politics Aside, It’s A Great Time To Be Alive

      Oct 30, 2020

      Whatever is going to happen with the election is going to happen. Most people have made up their minds, and it’s unlikely that any October surprise — or even a November surprise — will change that. The polls have been stable for literally years now,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Jonah Goldberg: Pandemic And Politics Aside, It’s A Great Time To Be Alive

      Oct 30, 2020

      Whatever is going to happen with the election is going to happen. Most people have made up their minds, and it’s unlikely that any October surprise — or even a November surprise — will change that. The polls have been stable for literally years now,

      3 min read

    • Article

      NEGATIVE: Adding Tens of Millions of People Would Exacerbate America’s Problems

      Mar 16, 2023

      THE BEST WAY to understand the difficulty of open borders is simply to imagine it happening—not in the distant past when travel was difficult and the West was unsettled, but today Open borders wouldn’t simply let in the several million people already

      3 min read

    • Article

      One Thing Corona Won’t Kill: Inequality

      May 29, 2020

      south Africa is one of the most unequal countries on earth. Statistics like the Gini coefficient only confirm what any tourist sees on arrival: Large disparities in living standards between those in the swanky suburbs of Sandton or Stellenbosch and t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Lessons From The Pandemic

      Aug 20, 2020

      Lessons From The Pandemic
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Limits of Rhetoric

      Nov 2, 2020

      The Limits of Rhetoric
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Great Leveler

    4/5

    39 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      One of the driest, dullest books I've ever read in my life. I'm sure there's a lot of interesting information in here If it could have been delivered in any other way then just rattling off statistics

      2 people found this helpful