"After struggling to build its products on three continents, Apple was lured by China's seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap labor. Soon it was sending thousands of engineers across the Pacific, training millions of workers, and spending hundreds of billions of dollars to create the world's most sophisticated supply chain. These capabilities enabled Apple to build the 21st century's most iconic products--in staggering volume and for enormous profit. Without explicitly intending to, Apple built an advanced electronics industry within China, only to discover that its massive investments in technology upgrades had inadvertently given Beijing a power that could be weaponized. In Apple in China, journalist Patrick McGee draws on more than two hundred interviews with former executives and engineers, supplementing their stories with unreported meetings held by Steve Jobs, emails between top executives, and internal memos regarding threats from Chinese competition. The book highlights the unknown characters who were instrumental in Apple's ascent and who tried to forge a different path, including the Mormon missionary who established the Apple Store in China; the "Gang of Eight" executives tasked with placating Beijing; and an idealistic veteran whose hopes of improving the lives of factory workers were crushed by both Cupertino's operational demands and Xi Jinping's war on civil society. Apple in China is the sometimes disturbing and always revelatory story of how an outspoken, proud company that once praised "rebels" and "troublemakers"--the company that encouraged us all to "Think Different"--devolved into passively cooperating with a belligerent regime that increasingly controls its fate."

A riveting, firsthand investigation of China's seismic progress, its human costs, and what it means for America. For close to a decade, technology analyst Dan Wang has been living through the country's astonishing, messy progress. China's towering bridges, gleaming railways, and sprawling factories have improved economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain through the society. This reality -- political repression and astonishing growth -- is not a paradox, but rather a feature of China's engineering mindset. In Breakneck, Wang blends political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal a provocative new framework for understanding China -- one that helps us see America more clearly, too. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad. Blending razor-sharp analysis with immersive storytelling, Wang offers a gripping portrait of a nation in flux. Breakneck traverses metropolises like Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen, where the engineering state has created not only dazzling infrastructure but also a sense of optimism. The book also exposes the downsides of social engineering, including the surveillance of ethnic minorities, political suppression, and the traumas of the one-child policy and zero-Covid. In an era of animosity and mistrust, Wang unmasks the shocking similarities between the United States and China. Breakneck reveals how each country points toward a better path for the other: Chinese citizens would be better off if their government could learn to value individual liberties, while Americans would be better off if their government could learn to embrace engineering -- and to produce better outcomes for the many, not just the few.

At a time when we are faced with fundamental questions about the sustainability and morality of the economic system, this book provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from colonialism and the Industrial Revolution to the ecological crisis and artificial intelligence. John Cassidy adopts a bold new approach: he tells the story through the eyes of the system's critics. From eighteenth-century weavers who rebelled against early factory automation to Eric Williams's paradigm-changing work on slavery and capitalism, to the Latin American dependistas, the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, and the modern degrowth movement, this absorbing narrative traverses the globe.

A revelatory exploration of how today's rightwing authoritarianism emerged not in opposition to neoliberalism, but from within it. After the end of the Cold War, neoliberalism, with its belief in the virtues of markets and competition, seemed to have triumphed. Communism had been defeated - and Friedrich Hayek, the spiritual father of neoliberal economics, had just about lived to see it. But in the decades that followed, Hayek's disciples knew that they had a problem. The rise of social movements, from civil rights and feminism to environmentalism, were now proving roadblocks in the road to freedom, nurturing a culture of government dependency, public spending, political correctness and special pleading. Neoliberals needed an antidote. In this illuminating new book, historian Quinn Slobodian reveals how, from the 1990s onwards, neoliberal thinkers turned to nature, in an attempt to roll back social changes and to return to a hierarchy of gender, race and cultural difference. He explores how these thinkers drew on the language of science, from cognitive psychology to genetics, in order to embed the idea of 'competition' ever deeper into social life, and to advocate cultural homogeneity as essential for markets to truly work. Reading and misreading the writings of their sages, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, they forged the alliances with racial psychologists, neoconfederates, ethnonationalists that would become known as the alt-right. Hayek's Bastards shows that many contemporary iterations of the Far Right, from Javier Milei to Donald Trump, emerged not in opposition to neoliberalism, but within it. As repellent as their politics may be, these supposed disruptors are not defectors from the neoliberal order, but its latest cheerleaders

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Advance copies of Ray Dalio's new book about how countries go broke have become a hot read in Washington." --The New York Times "This book is a gift to humanity....Ray provides a solution to what is the biggest and most certain threat to our prosperity." --Henry M. Paulson Jr. "An invaluable resource for policymakers, investors, and citizens." --Lawrence H. Summers An urgent warning about the American economy from Ray Dalio, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Principles. Do big government debts threaten our collective well-being? Are there limits to debt growth? Can a big, important reserve currency country like the United States really go broke--and what would that look like? For decades, politicians, policymakers, and investors have debated these questions, but the answers have eluded them. In this groundbreaking book, Ray Dalio, one of the greatest investors of our time who anticipated the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2010-12 European debt crisis, shares for the first time his detailed explanation of what he calls the "Big Debt Cycle." Understanding this cycle is critical for helping policymakers, investors, and the general public grasp where we are and where we are headed with the debt issue. Dalio's model points toward surprisingly straightforward solutions for dealing with the debt problems that the US, Europe, Japan, and China face today. How Countries Go Broke also shows how these debt problems are related to the other forces--political within countries, geopolitical between countries, natural (droughts, floods, and pandemics), and technological (most importantly, AI)--that together are causing what Dalio calls the "Overall Big Cycle" changes in the world order. By reading this book, you will improve your understanding of what's happening now and what to do about it

In How Will Capitalism End? the acclaimed analyst of contemporary politics and economics Wolfgang Streeck argues that capitalism is now in a critical condition. Growth is giving way to secular stagnation; inequality is leading to instability; and confidence in the capitalist money economy has all but evaporated. Capitalisms shotgun marriage with democracy since 1945 is breaking up as the regulatory institutions restraining its advance have collapsed, and after the final victory of capitalism over its enemies no political agency capable of rebuilding them is in sight. The capitalist system is stricken with at least five worsening disorders for which no cure is at hand: declining growth, oligarchy, starvation of the public sphere, corruption and international anarchy. In this arresting book Wolfgang Streeck asks if we are witnessing a long and painful period of cumulative decay: of intensifying frictions, of fragility and uncertainty, and of a steady succession of normal accidents.

Left behind places can be found in prosperous countries—from South Yorkshire, integral to the industrial revolution and now England’s poorest county, to Barranquilla, once Colombia’s portal to the Caribbean and now struggling. More alarmingly, the poorest countries in the world are diverging further from the rest of humanity. Why have these places fallen further behind? And what can we do about it? World-renowned development economist Paul Collier has spent his life working in neglected communities. In this book he offers his candid diagnosis of why some regions and countries are falling further behind, and a new vision for how they can catch up. Collier lays the blame for widening inequality on stale economic orthodoxies that prioritize market forces and centralized bureaucracies like the UK Treasury. In contrast, a new wave of academic research has revealed the crucial role of collective learning, social capital and local agency in reversing decline and equalising life-chances. Drawing on insights from social psychology, moral philosophy and behavioural economics, as well as a range of illuminating case studies, Collier shares a galvanizing vision for a more inclusive, prosperous world.

"A step-by-step examination of how production processes-from penicillin and automobiles to steel and semiconductors-get more efficient over time, and why it matters for unlocking a new era of abundance. Efficiency is the engine that powers human civilization. It's the reason rates of famine have fallen precipitously, literacy has risen, and humans are living longer, healthier lives compared to preindustrial times. But where do improvements in production efficiency come from? In The Origins of Efficiency, Brian Potter argues that improving production efficiency-finding ways to produce goods and services in less time, with less labor, using fewer resources-is the force behind some of the biggest and most consequential changes in human history. With unprecedented depth and detail, Potter examines the fundamental characteristics of a production process and how it can be made less time- and resource-intensive, and therefore less expensive. The book is punctuated with examples of production efficiency in practice, including how high-yield manufacturing methods made penicillin the "miracle drug" that reduced battlefield infection deaths by 80 percent during World War II; the 100-year history of process improvements in incandescent light bulb production; and how automakers like Ford, Toyota, and Tesla developed innovative production methods that transformed not just the automotive industry but manufacturing as a whole. He concludes by looking at sectors where production costs haven't fallen, and explores how we might harness the mechanisms of production efficiency to change that. The Origins of Efficiency is a comprehensive companion for anyone seeking to understand how we arrived at this age of relative abundance-and how we can push efficiency improvements further into domains like housing, medicine, and education, where much work is left to be done"--

A radical examination by a leading financial analyst, commentator and investor of the ills of capitalism and how they can be fixed What went wrong with capitalism? Ruchir Sharma's explanation is unlike any you have heard before. Progressives are partly right when they mock modern capitalism as "socialism for the rich" but what really happened in recent decades is that government in developed nations expanded in just about every measurable dimension, from spending and regulation to the sheer scale of its rescues each time the economy wobbled. The result, Sharma says, is "socialized risk," expensive government guarantees, for everyone - welfare for the poor, entitlements for the middle class, and bailouts for the rich. Voters say they are disillusioned with capitalism, but a system so distorted by government interventions is a dysfunctional version of free market ideals. As a result, productivity and economic growth have slowed sharply, shrinking the pie for everyone and stoking popular anger. Since these flaws developed as the government expanded, building an even bigger state will only double down on what's gone wrong. The answer Sharma offers is a series of seven fixes to restore the balance between state support and free markets and lay the path to a more prosperous and happier future"--Publisher.