The great leveler : violence and the history of inequality from the Stone Age to the twenty-first century / Walter Scheidel.

"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. Inequa...

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Bibliographic Details
Uniform Title:Princeton economic history of the Western world.
Main Author: Scheidel, Walter, 1966- (Author)
Language:English
Published: Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2017]
Series:Princeton economic history of the Western world.
Subjects:
Equality > History.
Violence > History.
Equality.
Violence.
History.
Genre:
History.
Physical Description:xvii, 504 pages : illustrations, charts ; 24 cm.
Format: Book
Contents:
  • Introduction: The Challenge of Inequality
  • A Brief History Of Inequality. The Rise of Inequality
  • Empires of Inequality
  • Up and Down
  • War. Total War
  • The Great Compression
  • Preindustrial Warfare and Civil War
  • Revolution. Communism
  • Before Lenin
  • Collapse. State Failure and Systems Collapse
  • Plague. The Black Death
  • Pandemics, Famine, and War
  • Alternatives. Reform, Recession, and Representation
  • Economic Development and Education
  • What If ? From History to Counterfactuals
  • Inequality Redux And The Future Of Leveling.
  • In Our Time
  • What Does the Future Hold?
  • Appendix: The Limits of Inequality.