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  • Published: 28 February 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141990927
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

Winners Take All

The Elite Charade of Changing the World




An insider's trenchant investigation of how the global elite's efforts to "change the world" preserve the status quo and obscure their culpability

Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can - except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. We see how they rebrand themselves as saviours of the poor; how they lavishly reward "thought leaders" who redefine "change" in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm.

But why should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, Giridharadas argues that we must take on the gruelling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions. Trenchant and revelatory, Winners Take All is a call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.

  • Published: 28 February 2019
  • ISBN: 9780141990927
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

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Praise for Winners Take All

A trenchant, humane, and often revelatory investigation by one of the wisest nonfiction writers going

Katherine Boo, author of Behind the Beautiful Forevers

A brilliant, rising voice of our era takes us on a journey among the global elite in his search for understanding of our tragic disconnect. Thought-provoking, expansive, and timely

Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns

In this trenchant and timely book, Anand Giridharadas shows how the winners of global capitalism seek to help the losers, but without disturbing the market-friendly arrangements that keep the winners on top. An indispensable guide for those perplexed by the rising public anger toward 'change-making' elites

Michael J. Sandel, author of What Money Can't Buy

Winners Take All boldly exposes one of the great if little-reported scandals of the age of globalization: the domestication of the life of the mind by political and financial power and the substitution of 'thought leaders' for critical thinkers. It not only reorients us as we lurch out of a long ideological intoxication; it also embodies the values -- intellectual autonomy and dissent -- that we need to build a just society

Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger

In Anand's thought-provoking book his fresh perspective on solving complex societal problems is admirable. I appreciate his commitment and dedication to spreading social justice

Bill Gates

Entertaining and gripping . . . For those at the helm, the philanthropic plutocrats and aspiring "change agents" who believe they are helping but are actually making things worse, it's time for a reckoning with their role in this spiraling dilemma. I suggest they might want to read a copy of this book while in the Hamptons this summer

Joseph Stiglitz, New York Times Book Review