Audiobook9 hours
The End of Normal: The Great Crisis and the Future of Growth
Written by James K. Galbraith
Narrated by L.J. Ganser
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
The years since the Great Crisis of 2008 have seen slow growth, high unemployment, falling home values, chronic deficits, a deepening disaster in Europe-and a stale argument between two false solutions, "austerity" on one side and "stimulus" on the other. Both sides and practically all analyses of the crisis so far take for granted that the economic growth from the early 1950s until 2000-interrupted only by the troubled 1970s-represented a normal performance. From this perspective the crisis was an interruption, caused by bad policy or bad people, and full recovery is to be expected if the cause is corrected. The End of Normal challenges this view. Placing the crisis in perspective, Galbraith argues that the 1970s already ended the age of easy growth. The 1980s and 1990s saw only uneven growth, with rising inequality within and between countries. And the 2000s saw the end even of that-despite frantic efforts to keep growth going with tax cuts, war spending, and financial deregulation. When the crisis finally came, stimulus and automatic stabilization were able to place a floor under economic collapse. But they are not able to bring about a return to high growth and full employment. Today, four factors impede a return to normal. They are the rising costs of real resources, the now-evident futility of military power, the labor-saving consequences of the digital revolution, and the breakdown of law and ethics in the financial sector. The Great Crisis should be seen as a turning point, a barometer of the rise of unstable economic conditions, which should be regarded as the new normal. Policies and institutions going forward should be designed, above all, modestly, to cope with this fact, maintaining conditions for a good life in difficult times.
Author
James K. Galbraith
James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Austin, Texas. The End of Normal is his first book.
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Reviews for The End of Normal
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
8 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I think, as a kid, I would have gobbled this book up. The adult in me wants more information about the lives of all the people included. Luckily for me, there is a section at the end with more information.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Tut likely died of malaria; Edgar Allan Poe is suspected to have had rabies. Beethoven and Galileo both met their ends due to lead poisoning. Fifteen other historical figures--world leaders, writers, scientists, and more--were felled by things as mundane as pneumonia and as unpredictable as angry mobs, and this book identifies which gruesome end each person came to.
The title alone will make this the easiest booktalk ever. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book was so much fun! It's simultaneously breezy and gross, and I think it will be embraced with glee by young teens. There's plenty of fabulously arcane information mixed in with the obligatory exploding corpses, blistering plasters, lead poisoning and leeches. Covers lots of famous deaders, from Cleopatra to Marie Curie, from Caesar to President Garfield. Recommended!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very interesting book about some of the more famous (and at least one not-so-famous) people from history, and the ways they died. Often, bad medical beliefs of the time contributed, as in the ugly, long-drawn-out death of former President James A. Garfield.Often gruesome, yet also funny, this would be a fun read for the 5th-8th grade crowd, and includes an extensive bibliography, index and suggested further reading of books and websites.Highly recommended!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In this supposedly "ghoulish" compendium of how famous (and infamous) people throughout the ages have died, the authors discuss, in sometimes vivid detail, the manner(s) through which they have died. I actually found myself wishing they would have gotten even more visceral with the descriptions! While interesting, it could have gone into more depth, but the book was definitely entertaining.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In this semi-ghoulish book, Georgia Bragg puts together a compendium of famous deaths. Many of the people she discusses -- Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, King Tut, Charles Dickens, Marie Curie, President James A. Garfield, Napoleon, Edgar Allan Poe, Pocahantas, Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Galileo, Mozart, Beethoven, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and more -- are well known for what they did while alive. Less is known about how they met their ends.Bragg provides a lot of extra information about these larger than life people along with how they died. For example, Charles Dickens was bi-polar and suffered mini-strokes that eventually led to his death. And Galileo suffered from gout, which was likely brought about from all of the lead-laced wine that he drank in place of water, which was thought to be unsafe at the time. He eventually died from lead poisoning. It's interesting to learn about how such well-known, productive people met their demise -- and as she writes in the final paragraph, "There is one thing to learn from each of their stories: whether your dream is to study worms or live in a space station ... it's up to you. Whatever your story is, if what you are doing is so much fun it feels like you're just playing, you are onto something very important. When you feel that way, you are doing what you're meant to do. Don't let anyone talk you out of it. Because guess what? Eventually, everybody's story ends."
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Details on the deaths and final dispositions of some of the most famous historical figures. Features last words, gore and humor.