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The Great Invention

The Story of GDP and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World

Ehsan Masood

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Hardback

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English
Pegasus
07 June 2016
The fascinating story of one of the twentieth-century's most influential and dangerously addictive ideas, told through the lives of those who invented it. The world’s principal measure of the health of economies is gross domestic product, or GDP: the sum of what all of us spend every day, from the contents of our weekly shopping to large capital spending by businesses. GDP also includes the myriad things that our governments pay for, from libraries and road-line painting to naval dockyards and nuclear weapons. The Great Invention reveals how in just a few decades GDP became the world’s most powerful formula: how six algebraic symbols forged in the fires of the 1930's economic crisis helped Europe and America prosper, how the remedy now risks killing the patient it once saved, and how this fundamentally flawed metric is creating the illusion of global prosperity—and why many world leaders want to be able to ignore it but so far remain powerless to do so. Drawing on interviews, firsthand accounts, and previously neglected source materials, The Great Invention takes readers on a journey from Capitol Hill to Whitehall—on the trail of theories made in Cambridge, tested in Karachi, and designed for global application—into the minds of unworldly geniuses seduced by the allure of power and the demands of politics.

By:  
Imprint:   Pegasus
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 218mm,  Width: 150mm,  Spine: 25mm
Weight:   352g
ISBN:   9781681771373
ISBN 10:   1681771373
Pages:   352
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Ehsan Masood is a science writer, journalist, and broadcaster. Formerly on the editorial staff of Nature and New Scientist, he is currently the editor of Research Fortnight and Research Europe and teaches international science policy at Imperial College London. As well as writing for Prospect magazine, The Times (London), The Guardian, and Le Monde, he is a frequent presenter for BBC Radio. He lives in London.

Reviews for The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World

An important and interesting book that shows how trapped we have become by the idea of Gross Domestic Product-and reveals how important it is to develop alternatives that will help us reduce inequality and respond to climate change. -- Kate E. Pickett, PhD, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York and co-author of 'The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone' In lively prose, Masood argues that GDP is flawed because it ignores volunteering, housework, environmental degradation, job satisfaction, and income inequality. -- Publishers Weekly


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