CAPITAL AND IDEOLOGY

Rick Adamson does a heroic job narrating this nearly 49-hour treatise on the history and reasons for income inequality. The audiobook's length is an obvious challenge, and Adamson handles that with a steady pace and an even performance. There is not much opportunity for him to show a broad narrative range--this is an audiobook more about policy choices than the people behind them. The print edition might be a better choice for some, including those wanting to skip around among the chapters or have Piketty's charts and graphs immediately at hand. (There are also PDFs online.) Piketty has written a complex book that takes on so much that at times it seems to lack a core idea. Adamson's narration gives it necessary cohesion and accessibility. This work is a sequel to CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY but can be listened to on its own. G.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2020]