An early contender for a Pulitzer, Sven Beckert’s readable, never dull doorstop of how more people came to believe in the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” —Chicago Tribune, Fall Books Preview

“Epic . . . An unparalleled work of scholarship that is also a joy to read, this is a monumental achievement.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A clarity that Karl Marx could only long for . . . Beckert’s agile account marches through the emergence of mercantilism and the invention of double-entry bookkeeping and proceeds through plantation and wage slavery, colonialism and postcolonialism, and a managerial/bureaucratic golden age . . . A comprehensive and up-to-date history, essential.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“Magisterial in scope and ambition, Sven Beckert’s Capitalism is a dazzling global history of the forces that have shaped—and continue to shape—our world. A true tour de force.” —Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at Oxford University and author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

“Sven Beckert is one of the world’s preeminent scholars on the history of capitalism, and in this monumentally important single-volume global history, simply titled Capitalism, he upends the deeply embedded notion that capitalism was born as a purely Western phenomenon. Instead, he powerfully demonstrates how its ascendancy over the last six centuries depended both on the genius and vibrancy of interconnected communities and on brutally exploitative systems, including slavery. Drawing on astonishing research across multiple continents, Beckert’s new book is a landmark achievement that reorients our understanding of capitalism as an evolving, ever-contested human creation. It is certain to become a canonical work of history.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University

“It’s hard to think of any other contemporary historian who could have written a new history of capitalism of such global scope and impressive scale. Capitalism promises to be an instant classic that will last.”
—Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy

“Sven Beckert has written what will surely become a key reference on the global history of modern capitalism. A monumental book, a must-read.”
—Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“In this magnificent history of capitalism, Sven Beckert presents an exceptionally illuminating account of the thousand years of what he calls (correctly, I think) ‘the most impactful revolution the world has ever seen.’ Beginning with the rapid expansion of trade and capital around the port of Aden in the twelfth century, the gripping history comes all the way to our time, telling us about commerce, technology and innovations, but also about people’s lives, worries and questions. One of the striking features of this splendid book is the avoidance of Eurocentrism in telling the story of capitalism. The global history, in this case, is truly global.”
—Amartya Sen, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics