How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

Crashed

Winner of the 2019 Lionel Gelber Prize 
 
'Majestic, informative and often delightful ... insights on every page' Yanis Varoufakis, Observer 
 
The definitive history of the Great Financial Crisis, from the acclaimed author of The Deluge and The Wages of Destruction. 
 
In September 2008 the Great Financial Crisis, triggered by the collapse of Lehman brothers, shook the world. A decade later its spectre still haunts us. As the appalling scope and scale of the crash was revealed, the financial institutions that had symbolised the West's triumph since the end of the Cold War, seemed - through greed, malice and incompetence - to be about to bring the entire system to its knees. 
 
Crashed is a brilliantly original and assured analysis of what happened and how we were rescued from something even worse - but at a price which continues to undermine democracy across Europe and the United States. Gnawing away at our institutions are the many billions of dollars which were conjured up to prevent complete collapse. Over and over again, the end of the crisis has been announced, but it continues to hound us - whether in Greece or Ukraine, whether through Brexit or Trump. Adam Tooze follows the trail like no previous writer and has written a book compelling as history, as economic analysis and as political horror story.

A detailed and superbly researched account of the origins and consequences of the wave of financial crises that emanated from the core of the global financial system from 2007. The prose is clear. The scholarship remarkable. Even people who have followed this story closely will learn a great deal.

Deserves to be at the top of the reading list of anyone interested in the events of 2008 ... A majestic narrative ... informative and often delightful, insights are to be found on every page

The global financial crises were undoubtedly seismic - and Tooze has provided a remarkably detailed narrative of their causes and consequences

Skilful ... A bold attempt by Adam Tooze, a distinguished British-American historian, to make sense of this recent tumult ... Sophisticated.

Bold and ambitious . . . probably the best of the current books about the First World War

Tooze made his name with The Wages of Destruction . . . His study of the post-1918 era is equally impressive, explaining why the US and its allies, having defeated Germany, were unable to stabilize the world economy and build a collective security system in Europe

Adam Tooze is the author of the highly praised The Deluge and The Wages of Destruction, both published by Allen Lane. The Wages of Destruction won the Wolfson Prize for History and the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize. He has taught at Cambridge and Yale and is now Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University.

In September 2008 the Great Financial Crisis, triggered by the collapse of Lehman brothers, shook the world. A decade later its spectre still haunts us. As the appalling scope and scale of the crash was revealed, the financial institutions that had symbolised the West's triumph since the end of the Cold War, seemed - through greed, malice and incompetence - to be about to bring the entire system to its knees. 
 
Crashed is a brilliantly original and assured analysis of what happened and how we were rescued from something even worse - but at a price which continues to undermine democracy across Europe and the United States. Gnawing away at our institutions are the many billions of dollars which were conjured up to prevent complete collapse. Over and over again, the end of the crisis has been announced, but it continues to hound us - whether in Greece or Ukraine, whether through Brexit or Trump. Adam Tooze follows the trail like no previous writer and has written a book compelling as history, as economic analysis and as political horror story.

The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order 1916-1931

The Deluge

WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES PRIZE FOR HISTORY 
 
FINANCIAL TIMES AND NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 
 
On the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, Deluge is a powerful explanation of why the war's legacy continues to shape our world - from Adam Tooze, the Wolfson Prize-winning author of The Wages of Destruction 
 
In the depths of the Great War, with millions of dead and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began to buckle. As the cataclysmic battles continued, a new global order was being born. 
 
Adam Tooze's panoramic new book tells a radical, new story of the struggle for global mastery from the battles of the Western Front in 1916 to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The war shook the foundations of political and economic order across Eurasia. Empires that had lasted since the Middle Ages collapsed into ruins. New nations sprang up. Strikes, street-fighting and revolution convulsed much of the world. And beneath the surface turmoil, the war set in motion a deeper and more lasting shift, a transformation that continues to shape the present day: 1916 was the year when world affairs began to revolve around the United States. 
 
America was both a uniquely powerful global force: a force that was forward-looking, the focus of hope, money and ideas, and at the same time elusive, unpredictable and in fundamental respects unwilling to confront these unwished for responsibilities. Tooze shows how the fate of effectively the whole of civilization - the British Empire, the future of peace in Europe, the survival of the Weimar Republic, both the Russian and Chinese revolutions and stability in the Pacific - now came to revolve around this new power's fraught relationship with a shockingly changed world. 
 
The Deluge is both a brilliantly illuminating exploration of the past and an essential history for the present.

A remarkable new synthesis which draws on [Tooze's] two particular areas of expertise, Eurasia and especially Germany, and the global financial system revolving around London ... the great strength of his book is that he invites us to look at familiar events in unfamiliar ways ... Tooze's account brims with contemporary resonances ... He is too good a historian, however, to turn this into a simple argument for Keynesian deficit financing ... the general public and policymakers alike will - must! - turn to Adam Tooze for instruction

It is particularly refreshing to read Adam Tooze's book ... it confirms his stature as an analyst of hugely complex political and economic issues ... Tooze's book covers a huge geographical sweep ... he shows himself a formidably impressive chronicler of a critical period of modern history, unafraid of bold judgements

Adam Tooze's masterly book should be required reading for anyone who wants to truly understand the significance of the war ... Extensively researched and written with exemplary clarity, this work is as monumentally ambitious as its subject ... his powers of description and analysis range across all inhabited continents ... this is a valuable look at the ways in which the years after the war came to define the rest of the 20th century

Interesting, engaging and very readable ... Underpinning this account is an impressive facility with numbers and an ability to analyse them that is increasingly rare among historians nowadays ... he has also delivered, for the first time, ...a clear and compelling rationale as to why it is actually worth going back and looking at the era of the First World War at this particular moment in time ... The Deluge reminds us, then, why we write history and why we should read it

Adam Tooze is Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Director of International Security Studies at Yale University. He taught for many years at the University of Cambridge. His last book, The Wages of Destruction, was universally acclaimed as one of the most important books written on the Third Reich. It was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and won both the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize and the Wolfson Prize for History.

In the depths of the Great War, with millions of dead and no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began to buckle. A new global order was being born. Adam Tooze's panoramic book tells the radical story of the struggle for global mastery from the battles of the Western Front in 1916 to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Deluge is both a brilliantly illuminating exploration of the past and an essential history for the present.

The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

The Wages of Destruction

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize

Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy provides a groundbreaking new account of how Hitler established himself in power, mobilized for war - and led his country to annihilation. 
 
 Was the tragedy of the Second World War determined by Nazi Germany's terrifying power, or by its fatal weakness? 
 
 This gripping and universally-acclaimed new history tells the real story of the cost of Hitler's plans for world domination - and will overturn everything you thought you knew about the Third Reich. 
 
 'A tour de force' Niall Ferguson 
 
 'Masterful ... smashes a gallery of preconceptions' The Times 
 
 'This book will change the way we look at Nazi history ... nothing less than a masterpiece. Rejoice, rejoice, for a great historian is born' Sunday Telegraph 
 
 'A remarkable and gripping revision of the history of Nazi Germany' New Statesman Books of the Year 
 
 'A powerful and provocative reassessment of the whole story' Richard Overy

Adam Tooze is Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Director of International Security Studies at Yale University. He taught for many years at the University of Cambridge. The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy was universally acclaimed as one of the most important books written on the Third Reich. It was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and won both the Longman-History Today Book of the Year Prize and the Wolfson Prize for History.

This chilling, fascinating new book is the first fully to get to grips with how Hitler's Nazi empire REALLY functioned. There was no aspect of Nazi power untouched by economics - it was Hitler's obsession and the reason the Nazis came to power in the first place. The Second World War was fought, in Hitler's view, to create a European Empire strong enough to take on the United States - a last chance for Europe to dig itself in before being swept away by the USA's ever greater power. But, as THE WAGES OF DESTRUCTION makes clear, Hitler was never remotely strong enough to beat either Britain or the Soviet Union - and never even had a serious plan as to how he might defeat the USA. It took years of fighting and the deaths of millions of people to destroy the Third Reich, but effectively World War II in Europe was fought in pursuit of a fantasy: the years in which Western Europe could settle the world's fate were, by 1939, long past. This is a major book by a major author and will provoke an enormous amount of controversy and debate.

Adam Tooze

A complex story, which Tooze tells with clarity and verve... The world is unlikely to be treated to a better account of the economics of the pandemic.

Shutdown is a seriously impressive book, both endlessly quotable and rigorously analytical. Tooze synthesises a huge volume of information to argue that we must prepare for a new wave of crises or risk being sunk by them. Hopefully, governments everywhere will heed his warning.

Mr Tooze displays a remarkable ability to master the detail ... This is truly a picture of the global impact of the crisis; it covers the disruption in the financial markets, as well as the ins and outs of government policy.

Fascinating, informative and wise.

An admirable work of synthesis and original analysis from the pre-eminent diagnostician of our age of discontents.

What sets [Shutdown] apart is Tooze's ability to keep his eye on the big picture - and the long view ... There will be plenty more books to come on the global economy of 2020. Few will be as timely, as wide-ranging or as clear as Shutdown.

[A] brilliant, bracing account of the Covid pandemic and its protracted political aftermath ... Nuanced and wide-ranging. Tooze has the impressive ability, as a writer, to contextualise historical events as they unfold.

To read Shutdown feels like sitting alongside the great professor while he feverishly collates an array of data and anecdotes, attempts to chronicle what is going on, his head fizzing with ideas about what it might all mean and where it might be leading ... a fine use of one's time.

Of all the instant histories spawned by the pandemic, this is the closest we'll get to a thriller ... it's a story that bears rereading ... a survival guide for the next man-made cataclysm that Adam Tooze warns will surely come soon.

A comprehensive history of an unprecedented year ... Readers will find this deeply informed parsing of the pandemic to be illuminating and thought-provoking.

Tooze examines the unprecedented decision of governments around the world to shutter their economies in the face of pandemic ... As the pandemic hopefully continues to fade, other crises remain. This book is a valuable forecast of future problems.

How Covid Shook the World's Economy

When the news first emerged from China about a new virus in December 2019, risk-averse financial markets were alert to its potential for disruption. Yet they could never have predicted the total economic collapse that would follow in COVID-19's wake, as stock markets fell faster and harder than at any time since 1929, currencies across the world plunged, investors panicked, and even gold was sold. 
 
In a matter of weeks, the world's economy was brought to an abrupt halt. Flights were grounded; supply chains broken; industries from tourism to oil to hospitality collapsed overnight, leaving hundreds of millions of people unemployed. Central banks responded with unprecedented interventions, just to keep their economies on life-support. For the first time since the second world war, the entire global economic system contracted. 
 
This book tells the story of that shutdown. We do not yet know how this story ends, or what new world we will find on the other side. In this fast-paced, compelling and at times shocking analysis, Adam Tooze surveys the wreckage, and looks at where we might be headed next.

Adam Tooze

Praise for Shutdown

A complex story, which Tooze tells with clarity and verve... The world is unlikely to be treated to a better account of the economics of the pandemic.

Shutdown is a seriously impressive book, both endlessly quotable and rigorously analytical. Tooze synthesises a huge volume of information to argue that we must prepare for a new wave of crises or risk ...

Mr Tooze displays a remarkable ability to master the detail ... This is truly a picture of the global impact of the crisis; it covers the disruption in the financial markets, as well as the ins and outs of go ...

A complex story, which Tooze tells with clarity and verve... The world is unlikely to be treated to a better account of the economics of the pandemic.

Shutdown is a seriously impressive book, both endlessly quotable and rigorously analytical. Tooze synthesises a huge volume of information to argue that we must prepare for a new wave of crises or risk ...

Mr Tooze displays a remarkable ability to master the detail ... This is truly a picture of the global impact of the crisis; it covers the disruption in the financial markets, as well as the ins and outs of go ...

A complex story, which Tooze tells with clarity and verve... The world is unlikely to be treated to a better account of the economics of the pandemic.

Shutdown is a seriously impressive book, both endlessly quotable and rigorously analytical. Tooze synthesises a huge volume of information to argue that we must prepare for a new wave of crises or risk ...

Mr Tooze displays a remarkable ability to master the detail ... This is truly a picture of the global impact of the crisis; it covers the disruption in the financial markets, as well as the ins and outs of go ...

Books by Adam Tooze

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