Davos Man cover art

Davos Man

How the Billionaires Devoured the World

Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Davos Man

By: Peter S. Goodman
Narrated by: Michael David Axtell
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

A 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
Economic History Economics Politics & Government Social Classes & Economic Disparity Sociology Government Capitalism Money Socialism Imperialism Taxation

Listeners also enjoyed...

The War on Small Business cover art
The Lords of Easy Money cover art
The Occupy Handbook cover art
The Hidden History of Neoliberalism cover art
The Bodies of Others cover art
Too Big to Jail cover art
The Long Game cover art
The Psychology of Totalitarianism cover art
One Nation Under Blackmail, Vol. 1 cover art
The Great Reset cover art
Beyond Outrage cover art
The Great Delusion cover art
A Decade of Disruption cover art
Invisible Trillions cover art
Goliath cover art
Overheated cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
This is a must read for anyone wanting to understand the modern world. I disagree with the author's conclusion.

Excellent book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Good account of today’s Plutocracy. I would recommend reading or listening to The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein first as Davos man sheds more light on the financial web the rich and the governments are weaving.

Reasonable listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The book itself is interesting, and the narrator is engaging, but look what it has done to my Audible algorithm ("You may also enjoy this book..."):

"The Bodies of Others" by Naomi Wolf, "The Real Anthony Fauci" by Robert F. Kennedy, "The Trap" by David Icke, "The Psychology of Totalitarianism" by Mathew Desmet, "Plandemic" by Micki Willis, "The Courage to Face Covid-19" by John Leake, "Covid-19 and the Global Predators" by Peter R. Breggin, "Gone Viral: How Covid Drove the World Insane" by Justin Hart, "The Great Reset" by Alex Jones, "The Great Reset" by Glenn Beck, "The Great Reset" by Mark Morano, "The New Abnormal" by Aaron Kheriaty, "Inventing the Aids Virus" by Peter H. Duesberg.

I don't know, should I return this book? The last thing I want is to receive conspiracy theory book recommendations! Has anyone else encountered this problem? What the hell, Amazon?

Buying this book ruined my recommendations list!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Brilliant! Jaw-dropping insight in a finely painted and excoriating survey of the surreal realm of the elite. Essential reading/listening towards understanding the world in which we live.

A Must Listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Only able to finish 1/3 of this book. I couldn’t bare the narrative of dramatic statements intended to invoke a negative emotional response, that repeatedly are not backed-up with any factual evidence or statistical reasoning. This book is simply the unfounded personal option of the author.
This book is a clear attack on the global elite, and rather than clearly outline the factual reasons for the alleged short comings in society, global finance and politics, the author uses a narrative nothing short of fiction. The end product is a book that reads more like a conspiracy theory than a real critique on the status quo.
I’m disappointed because I had high expectations of learning about this alleged “secret society” that “rule the world”. I should have know better.

Coloured by baseless opinion

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.