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The Value of Everything
The Value of Everything
Nov 21, 2024 7:28 AM

Author:Mariana Mazzucato,Amy Finegan

The Value of Everything

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Value of Everything by Mariana Mazzucato, read by Amy Finegan.

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight.

In modern capitalism, value-extraction is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. From companies driven solely to maximize shareholder value to astronomically high prices of medicines justified through big pharma's 'value pricing', we misidentify taking with making, and have lost sight of what value really means. Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value - what it is, why it matters to us - is simply no longer discussed.

Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in this penetrating and passionate new book, if we are to reform capitalism - radically to transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Which activities create it, which extract it, which destroy it? Answers to these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic - that works for us all. The Value of Everything will reignite a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.

Reviews

A stimulating analysis of the underlying causes of inequality and growth which forces us to confront long-held beliefs about how economies work and who benefits. ... The book itself adds value by forcing us to confront these points.

—— Martin Wolf , Financial Times

Someone should make a musical out of this book. That is quite unlikely, I grant you, but not as unlikely as it sounds. In 1893 the Savoy theatre staged Gilbert and Sullivan's penultimate operetta, Utopia, Limited ... It is time to rework the idea and Mariana Mazzucato is a candidate to write the libretto.

—— Philip Collins , The Times

As Mariana Mazzucuto's new book, published today, explains, our economy has been financialised and no longer rewards real value creation.

—— Chi Onwurah , New Statesman

Mariana Mazzucato ... argues that we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from to heal a sick system.

—— Richard Kilgarriff , Management Today

Mariana Mazzucato offers an exposé of how value extractors and rent-seekers have been masquerading as value creators in the global economy. And, furthermore, how the conventional wisdom has indulged them in this.

—— Fran Boait , Prospect

In The Value of Everything, published last week, Mazzucato sharpens her focus, not only lauding the role of 'mission-oriented' public investment, but honing her critique of the private sector too.

—— Liam Halligan , The Spectator

Some economists merely interpret the world in various ways; others seek to change it. Mariana Mazzucato is an exemplar of the latter kind. The Italian-American is a restless thinker drawn to transformative, disruptive projects. ... Mazzucato's mission is to overturn the now dominant neoclassical theory of value. In the mid-19th century, she explained, an intellectual revolution occurred: rather than value determining price, price began to determine value.

—— George Eaton , New Statesman

The Value of Everything is receiving accolades on Twitter from finance ministers and student idealists alike, and is clearly set to be essential summer reading for civil servants.

—— Delphine Strauss , Financial Times

Praise for The Entrepreneurial State: Conventional economics offers abstract models; conventional wisdom insists that the answer lies with private entrepreneurship. In this brilliant book, Mariana Mazzucato...argues that the former is useless and the latter incomplete.

—— Martin Wolf , Financial Times

One of the most incisive economic books in years.

—— Jeffery Madrick , New York Review of Books

This memoir is good and gossipy, will make you wish that you got to hang out with Barack and Michelle on a daily basis and is the missing link between The West Wing and Bridget Jones’s Diary.

—— Red

An apolitical, fundamentally human story, and one with which many women will identify.

—— Refinery29

An entertaining, relatable and refreshingly frank guide to life in the orbit of the President... This lively, entertaining story offers a joyful nostalgia trip back to more hopeful times.

—— Express

An extraordinary behind-the-scenes glimpse into Obama's White House, from a young woman who stumbles her way almost by chance into a job as a stenographer amongst the inner circle of the West Wing. Dorey-Stein’s memoir navigates intimate liaisons and world history, from hotel gyms to Air Force One.

—— Vogue

This memoir by a former Oval Office stenographer is equal parts racy, pacy and funny. From barely keeping her head above financial waters in Washington DC to hopping on board Air Force One with Barack Obama and his elite team, Dorey-Stein doesn’t so much dish the dirt as mop up the mess left at her feet by the drama of politics and the heartbreak of romance.

—— Irish Independent

An incredible story

—— GQ

Delightful... a bit Legally Blonde. What's most surprising about this isn't the hot pink cover, it's that we haven't had such a book before. Washington DC is famously a city of eager twentysomethings who work and date within the same pool. Where has the workplace relationship comedy been this whole time?

—— Mail on Sunday

Hilarious . . . [Beck] Dorey-Stein writes with honesty and panache.

—— Publishers Weekly

If you’re like me and you pour yourself a cocktail and look at pictures of Obama and cry, you will adore From the Corner of the Oval. If you’re a normal person who ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in a singularly historic place in time, you will find this book fascinating. Beck Dorey-Stein’s warmth, humor, and keen view made me wistful, happy, hopeful, and only sad when the book ended.

—— Julie Klam, author of The Stars in Our Eyes

An insider account of Obama's presidency in this fascinating memoir by former White House staffer Beck Dorey-Stein

—— Good Housekeeping

Intriguing and funny

—— Prima

A White House story with shades of Bridget Jones... Dorey-Stein is perceptive and has made an unusually interesting contribution to the groaning shelves of presidential history.

—— Evening Standard

For five years Beck Dorey-Stein was a stenographer in the White House, giving her a front-row seat as US political history was made.

—— Observer

[This] breezy page turner is essentially Bridget Jones goes to the White House.

—— New York Times

Hilsum is a former colleague, well placed to chart her friend’s life, with an especially brilliant account of her final week, where Colvin’s exposure to peril again went beyond the call of duty

—— Strong Words

Superb and moving

—— Emma Lee-Potter , Independent, **Books of the Year**

[Hilsum’s] tone is admiring but never adulatory, and her book is richly informed by her close knowledge of the events described… [an] excellent book

—— Caroline Moorehead , Times Literary Supplement

Lindsey Hilsum… in this account… [shows] just how brim full of life and heart Colvin was: from the start to the finish of her brilliant career, and of her sassy, rambunctious life

—— Barney Bardsley , On: Yorkshire

[An] excellent biography… I found it inspirational

—— Ann Treneman , The Times

This is a remarkable book, deeply moving, disturbing in its sometime intensity… such is the power of Lindsey Hilsum’s book

—— Tony Jasper , Methodist Recorder

Colvin’s tumultuous life has inspired a number of recent accounts… it is Hilsum’s biography, written by a woman who both knew Colvin and had access to her unpublished reporting notes and private diaries, that seems to most closely capture her spirit.

—— The New Yorker

Hilsum writes with admiration and compassionate understanding of her colleague, and of their collegial friendship that gets close to what we can, without sentiment, call love.

—— The New York Review of Books

A refreshing take on the ecology of modern economics . . . This book serves as a fascinating reminder to business leaders and economists alike to stand back at a distance to examine our modern economics.

—— Best Business Books of 2017 , Forbes

I am loving Kate Raworth’s book Doughnut Economics. It puts inequality in a far broader context, connecting a great many 21st century problems with a single vision. Every business leader and every policy maker should read it.

—— Tim O’Reilly

What if it were possible to live well without trashing the planet? Doughnut Economics succinctly captures this tantalising possibility and takes up its challenge. Brimming with creativity, Raworth reclaims economics from the dust of academia and puts it to the service of a better world.

—— Tim Jackson, author of PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH

Kate Raworth makes a powerful argument to look beyond economic growth alone for a true measure of prosperity and progress . . . The doughnut offers a vision for an equitable and sustainable future.

—— Intelligent HQ

This book gave me faith that there is an alternative story to tell to the neoliberal narrative.

—— Marcus de Sautoy

Finding a healthy alternative to the prevailing growth model that has strained the planet to bursting is the holy grail of environmental economics. And it looks like maybe we’ve found it . . . It’s hard to understate how exciting this revelation is

—— Inhabitat

This is truly the book we've all been waiting for. Kate Raworth provides the antidote to neoliberal economics with her radical and ambitious vision of an economy in service to life. Given the current state of the world, we need Doughnut Economics now more than ever.

—— L. Hunter Lovins, president and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions

I read this book with the excitement that the people of his day must have read John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory. It is brilliant, thrilling and revolutionary. Drawing on a deep well of learning, wisdom and deep thinking, Kate Raworth has comprehensively reframed and redrawn economics. It is entirely accessible, even for people with no knowledge of the subject. I believe that Doughnut Economics will change the world.

—— George Monbiot, author and Guardian columnist

Raworth’s groundbreaking book hand-picks the best emergent ideas – ranging from ecological, behavioural and institutional economics to complexity thinking, and Earth-systems science – to reveal the insights of eclectic economic re-thinkers . . . Revolutionary.

—— Judges' Statement, The Transmission Prize 2018

In Doughnut Economics Raworth takes on the enormous task of sketching out a new approach to the economy in 290 pages . . . A dizzying whirl through the 300 years of economic theory, and challenges to their fundamental principles

—— City A.M.

One of last year's most important books on (fixing) economics

—— Best Books on Innovation , Nesta

A good starting point for a much needed debate about economic policy priorities.

—— Reuters BreakingViews

Highly informed and intelligent.

—— Socialist Review

[Raworth’s] business-friendly 2017 book Doughnut Economics advocated meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet.

—— 1000 Most Influential Londoners , Evening Standard

Powerful and radical

—— Building.co.uk

It's an absolute must-read about the circular economy and an economic model beyond capitalism.

—— Sam Galsworthy, co-founder of Sipsmith , The Grocer

Excellent

—— Ben Cooke , The Times

It’s the first book about the future economy that I can’t put down!

—— Frances Morris , ELLE Decoration

A fascinating look at future economic policy

—— U2’s The Edge , Daily Telegraph

Kate is not the first person to try to reconcile economic growth with our world's finite resources . . . but her book makes a complex thesis accessible.

—— George Alagiah , New Statesman

One of the best books I have read in the last year or two was Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth, an economist. She puts economics into the framework of society and the environment, rather than at the top. I recommend it to all.

—— Lord Greaves

In Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth's economics serve life - not the endless growth of late capitalism. Compellingly, she invites us to see the economy as an organism rather than a mechanism. By referring to our knowledge of natural systems instead of the machine models of Newtonian mechanics, she offers us a way to reimagine money in order to regenerate rather than degenerate. In this wonderful, readable book, Raworth completely rewrites the textbooks of economic theory in language that is lucid and inspirational: a must read!

—— Antony Gormley , GQ

Raworth radically redraws the system, putting people's needs at its heart . . . with growth bound by an ecological ceiling, the outer edge of the circle, beyond which there is climate change, freshwater stress and biodiversity loss. The doughnut is the safe space where there can be sustainable development.

—— Conde Nast Traveller

An accessible, relatable account that relays academic thinking back to everyday lives and communities.

—— Best Books on Climate Change , Independent
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