Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World

Written by Peter S. Goodman

Narrated by Michael David Axtell

A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller  • An NPR Best Book of the Year

The New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent masterfully reveals how billionaires’ systematic plunder of the world—brazenly accelerated during the pandemic—has transformed 21st-century life and dangerously destabilized democracy.

“Davos Man will be read a hundred years from now as a warning.” —Evan Osnos

“Excellent. A powerful, fiery book, and it could well be an essential one.”  —NPR.org

The history of the last half century in America, Europe, and other major economies is in large part the story of wealth flowing upward. The most affluent people emerged from capitalism’s triumph in the Cold War to loot the peace, depriving governments of the resources needed to serve their people, and leaving them tragically unprepared for the worst pandemic in a century.

Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative “Davos Men”—members of the billionaire class—chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man’s wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more.

Goodman’s revelatory exposé of the global billionaire class reveals their hidden impact on nearly every aspect of modern society: widening wealth inequality, the rise of anti-democratic nationalism, the shrinking opportunity to earn a livable wage, the vulnerabilities of our health-care systems, access to affordable housing, unequal taxation, and even the quality of the shirt on your back. Meticulously reported yet compulsively readable, Davos Man is an essential read for anyone concerned about economic justice, the capacity of societies to grapple with their greatest challenges, and the sanctity of representative government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jan 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9780063078338

Peter S. Goodman

Peter S. Goodman is the Global Economics Correspondent for the New York Times. He was previously the NYT’s European economics correspondent, based in London, and the national economics correspondent, based in New York, where he played a leading role in the paper’s award-winning coverage of the Great Recession, including a series that was a Pulitzer finalist. Previously, he covered the Internet bubble and bust as the Washington Post’s telecommunications reporter, and served as WashPo’s China-based Asian economics correspondent. He is the author of Davos Man and Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy. He graduated from Reed College and completed a master’s in Vietnamese history from the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews for Davos Man

[Mj Bennett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I decided to get this after hearing a recent interview on the Realignment podcast. Which propped me to cancel my subscription to Audible.com.

[Dilara Ucar · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

very good audiobook. I learned a lot and factchecked some of the claims, I was shocked to find out they were all true.

[A_Mulligan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An outstanding indictment of the stateless billionaire class and investigation into their duplicitous PR strategies. While not fundamentally incorrect, could have benefitted from a different take on the ongoing culture war, as his central argument is actually a great one for the unification of the non-billionaire masses. Should they pay attention to the central argument, Trump supporters could benefit from this read as much as Sanders supporters.