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The Times (UK) book of the year! Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? In The Aristocracy of Talent, esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities, and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system. Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.
An urgent and informed look at the challenges Britain and world governments will face in a post-Covid-19 world. The Covid crisis has not just highlighted the failures of certain governments, it is accelerating a shift in the balance of power from West to East. After a decade where politics in the US and the UK has been consumed with inward-facing struggles, countries like South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, as well as China, have made extraordinary advances economically, technologically and politically. In this beautifully crafted essay, Micklethwait and Wooldridge explain how we ended up in this mess and explore the possible routes out. If Western governments respond creatively to the crisis, they will have a chance of reversing decades of decline; if they dither and delay while Asia continues to improve, the prospect of a new Eastern-dominated world order will increase. The big question facing the world is whether the West can rise to the challenge as it has before.
'An inspiring, rip-roaring read - like the astonishing story it describes' Liam Halligan, Daily Telegraph Where does prosperity come from, and how does it spread through a society? What role does innovation play in creating prosperity and why do some eras see the fruits of innovation spread more democratically, and others, including our own, find the opposite? In Capitalism in America, Alan Greenspan, legendary Chair of the Federal Reserve, distils a lifetime of grappling with these questions into a profound assessment of the decisive drivers of the US economy over the course of its history. In partnership with Economist journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge, he unfolds a tale of vast l...
In The Fourth Revolution, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge ask: what is the state actually for? Their remarkable book describes the three great revolutions in its history, and the fourth which is happening now In most of the states of the West, disillusion with government has become endemic. Gridlock in America; anger in much of Europe; cynicism in Britain; decreasing legitimacy everywhere. Most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. But as John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us in this galvanising book, this is a seriously limited view of things. In response to earlier crises in government, there have been three great revolutions, which have bro...
The Right Nation is not "for" liberals, and it's not "for" conservatives. It's for any of us who want to understand one of the most important forces shaping American life. How did America's government become so much more conservative in just a generation? Compared to Europe-or to America under Richard Nixon-even President Howard Dean would preside over a distinctly more conservative nation in many crucial respects: welfare is gone; the death penalty is deeply rooted; abortion is under siege; regulations are being rolled back; the pillars of New Deal liberalism are turning to sand. Conservative positions have not prevailed everywhere, of course, but this book shows us why they've been so succ...
Chosen by BusinessWeek as One of the Top Ten Business Books of the Year With apologies to Hegel, Marx, and Lenin, the basic unit of modern society is neither the state, nor the commune, nor the party; it is the company. From this bold premise, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge chart the rise of one of history’s great catalysts for good and evil. In a “fast-paced and well-written” work (Forbes), the authors reveal how innovations such as limitations on liability have permitted companies to rival religions and even states in importance, governing the flow of wealth and controlling human affairs–all while being largely exempt from the rules that govern our lives. The Company is that rare, remarkable book that fills a major gap we scarcely knew existed. With it, we are better able to make sense of the past four centuries, as well as the events of today.
As the world becomes more modern, it is not becoming more secular. Instead, on the street and in the corridors of power, religion is surging. As God is Back shows, for better or for worse, faith is on the increase fuelled by an American-style model of personal, customer-driven, aggressively marketed religion. Shining a light on this huge, hidden world of faith, from Californian megachurches to exorcisms in Sao Paulo, from China's aspirant middle-class Christians to mosques in Nigeria, this book shows that if you want to understand the modern world, you cannot afford to ignore God whether you believe in Him or not.
THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR *Shortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times and McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year Award* 'This unique and fascinating history explains why the blame now being piled upon meritocracy for many social ills is misplaced-and that assigning responsibilities to the people best able to discharge them really is better than the time-honoured customs of corruption, patronage, nepotism and hereditary castes' Steven Pinker Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their status at birth. For much of history this was a revolutionary thought, but by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology...
SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, FT AND EVENING STANDARD BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 The momentous new book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Iron Curtain. In 1932-33, nearly four million Ukrainians died of starvation, having been deliberately deprived of food. It is one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the twentieth century. With unprecedented authority and detail, Red Famine investigates how this happened, who was responsible, and what the consequences were. It is the fullest account yet published of these terrible events. The book draws on a mass of archival material and first-hand testimony only available since the end of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Uk...
As the world becomes more modern, it is not becoming more secular. Instead, on the street and in the corridors of power, religion is surging. As God is Back shows, for better or for worse, faith is on the increase - fuelled by an American-style model of personal, customer-driven, aggressively marketed religion. Shining a light on this huge, hidden world of faith, from Californian megachurches to exorcisms in Sao Paulo, from China's aspirant middle-class Christians to mosques in Nigeria, this book shows that if you want to understand the modern world, you cannot afford to ignore God - whether you believe in Him or not.