The Insatiable Machine

A monumental and passionate indictment of the economic system that has created incomparable wealth and innovation but has gutted the democratic systems and planet that sustained it. The Insatiable Machine is a dramatic, brilliant, and even tragically entertaining overview of capitalism’s epic rise and triumph.–Jacob Soll, author of Free MarketThe Insatiable Machine provides a remarkably wide-ranging history of how capitalism came to be the global norm, through invention, violence, empire, and the unexpected consequences of myriad decisions. Now, Trevor Jackson argues, its environmental effects will destroy the world it created. His lucid, hugely knowledgeable tour through four centuries can help us think about what the future might be.–Joshua B. Freeman, author of Behemoth

Trevor Jackson is an economic historian at University of California, Berkeley, who also writes for The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Dissent, and The Baffler. He is the author of a monograph, Impunity and Capitalism. He lives in Berkeley, California.