An Economic History of the Twenty-First Century

What do I want to say about this? It is what it says on the can. I read this on the advice of a vibecoded website that aggregated all of the book recommendations on Ezra Klein's podcast. I should have known better.

The book is about how, despite the fact that humanity has had access to staggering prosperity since around the year 1870, we have struggled to actually apply it to the problems of inequality and human suffering, except for maybe during the thirty years after World War II. The tone is optimistic but frustrated. The tools are right there guys, etc. etc.

I get the sense that this is one of those books for people with a friend group who all also read books and pat each other on the back for being enlightened and kind of wealthy and totally insulated from exactly the kinds of problems that DeLong is nominally frustrated about, which is the kind if person I would be, probably, if there were any other people like that around here for me to be like that with, but which there aren't.