Available Formats
The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
By (Author) Walter Scheidel
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
26th November 2018
United States
General
Non Fiction
Population and demography
Economic and financial crises and disasters
Welfare economics
303.609
Paperback
528
Width 133mm, Height 203mm
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 it never dies peacefully. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of
"Shortlisted for the 2017 Cundill History Prize, McGill University"
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"A very perky storyif anyone wants to be lifted up then this is the book for you" * JOE Media *
"This shows how inequality has increased across all of human society under every form of political organisation since the Stone Age- except in the wake of mass mobilised warfare or natural catastrophes. Sobering."---Henry Dimbleby, The Week
Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. The author or editor of seventeen previous books, he has published widely on premodern social and economic history, demography, and comparative history. He lives in Palo Alto, California.