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Davos Man

By: Peter S. Goodman
Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
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Publisher's Summary

San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller  • An NPR Best Book of the Year

The New York Times’s Global Economics Correspondent masterfully reveals how billionaires’ systematic plunder of the world—brazenly accelerated during the pandemic—has transformed 21st-century life and dangerously destabilized democracy.

Davos Man will be read a hundred years from now as a warning.” —Evan Osnos

“Excellent. A powerful, fiery book, and it could well be an essential one.”  —NPR.org

The history of the last half century in America, Europe, and other major economies is in large part the story of wealth flowing upward. The most affluent people emerged from capitalism’s triumph in the Cold War to loot the peace, depriving governments of the resources needed to serve their people, and leaving them tragically unprepared for the worst pandemic in a century.

Drawing on decades of experience covering the global economy, award-winning journalist Peter S. Goodman profiles five representative “Davos Men”—members of the billionaire class—chronicling how their shocking exploitation of the global pandemic has hastened a fifty-year trend of wealth centralization. Alongside this reporting, Goodman delivers textured portraits of those caught in Davos Man’s wake, including a former steelworker in the American Midwest, a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a Seattle doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID, blue-collar workers in the tenements of Buenos Aires, an African immigrant in Sweden, a textile manufacturer in Italy, an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City, and more.

Goodman’s revelatory exposé of the global billionaire class reveals their hidden impact on nearly every aspect of modern society: widening wealth inequality, the rise of anti-democratic nationalism, the shrinking opportunity to earn a livable wage, the vulnerabilities of our health-care systems, access to affordable housing, unequal taxation, and even the quality of the shirt on your back. Meticulously reported yet compulsively readable, Davos Man is an essential read for anyone concerned about economic justice, the capacity of societies to grapple with their greatest challenges, and the sanctity of representative government.

©2022 Peter S. Goodman (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Insightful and productive with a pinch of misleading title

READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU ARE WONDERING IF THIS BOOK REVEALS THE INNER WORKING AND DEEP IDEOLOGIES OF THE GLOBALIST AGENDA!!!

It doesn’t.
But what it lacks in dark conspiratorial intrigue and it made up for in a useful and productive summary behind some of the most wealthy people!

If you’re expecting to find out how Kissinger and a few other academic ideologues groomed Klaus Schwab to found the WEF through dark CIA and Mossad money under the cover of Harvard to lead a new world order of globalists based on some strange neo-communist Leninism global governance ideology enabled by Hararian bio-futurist technologies; this is not the book for you.

However if you want to understand why Trump is a greedy dud, and Biden kinda does want to fix the problem of inequality in the USA, then this is TOTALLY the book for you!

I learnt a lot, and I feel the title and blurb were misleading mainly because of the repeated mention of DJ Trump, who after completing the book I agree is a greedy populist narcissist willing to sell out to Fink et al, but is NOT a ‘Davos man’ as I imagine the term per. Whereas Biden, who sits on the Board of Trustees of Davos native World Economic Forum is given a soft touch comparatively.

Regardless I’m not from USA and I think Trump and Biden are both bad, so the political slights were just bothersome.

It’s the NYT touch, pervasive as hell I know long time veteran MD Axtell probably can’t help the political hit jobs, even in a book about Davos men!

I like how it focussed on economics, greed, ego, exploitation in a thorough and investigative way especially with regard to the financial corruption of politicians from Italy to Argentina! I like that Axtell gave cursor jabs at how these ‘Davos men’ would do anything for profit, especially off crises, and justify it any which way.

I would’ve preferred it to be more ideologically focussed around the foundation and philosophy behind the Davos phenomena that is becoming a large part of our global governance framework, and while the conclusions were thorough, the potential for tax or even democracy to solve the problem of wealth inequality is rapidly evaporating in my opinion.

This book gets 5 points to billionaire play boys but half a point to deep philosophical protégés, brain childs, and power brokers behind the usher of the New World Order or whatever catch line they give it next.

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    5 out of 5 stars

Extremely well written and a captivating listen!

An insightful view into how the billionaire class has manipulated policy making and plundered wealth regardless of its effects on the average person. How their empty platitudes and gatherings are just a facade to misinform the public while they manipulate our political system for their own economic gain behind closed doors. Extremely well written and a captivating listen!

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Don’t waste your time.

Biden loving, Trump hating book is not worth it. Regarding Covid, I can not believe how many false statements there are in this book.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Do not bother.

Struggled to keep up with this book. Regret buying it like with most books now days. Waste of money.

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