FT Business Book of the Year

Best business books

All the books longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

Disorder by Helen Thompson

Disorder

Helen Thompson’s Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century … is an ambitious attempt to weave together geopolitical, economic and domestic political themes into a single narrative — telling the story of the increasing instability of the global political system today. — Read the complete FT review

Categories
Economics, 
History

Synopsis

The 21st century has brought a powerful tide of geopolitical, economic, and democratic shocks. Their fallout has led central banks to create over $25 trillion of new money, brought about a new age of geopolitical competition, destabilised the Middle East, ruptured the European Union, and exposed old political fault lines in the United States.

Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century is a long history of this present political moment. It recounts three histories - one about geopolitics, one about the world economy, and one about western democracies - and explains how in the years of political disorder prior to the pandemic the disruption in each became one big story. It shows how much of this turbulence originated in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies, and it explains why as the green transition takes place the long-standing predicaments energy invariably shapes will remain in place.