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Book review – The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century | The Inquisitive Biologist

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Given that I predominantly review books on biology, you may wonder why a book on the history of economic inequality would be reviewed here. All I can say in my defence is that this biologist is nothing if not inquisitive. Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler is a global deep history of inequality. Having taken a long, hard look at a huge range of historical evidence, Scheidel contends that only extreme violence and catastrophe have historically been able to bring more economic equality into the world. “The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century”, written by Walter Scheidel, published by Princeton University Press in January 2017 (hardback, 536 pages) Economic inequality has been a trending topic. By now it is unlikely that you have not heard of phrases such as “the 1%” or “the 99%”. But such inequality has a long and illustrious history. Scheidel argues that it was born after the last Ice Age, the unusually stable climate of

Given that I predominantly review books on biology, you may wonder why a book on the history of economic inequality would be reviewed here. All I can say in my defence is that this biologist is nothing if not inquisitive. Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler is a global deep history of inequality. Having taken a long, hard look at a huge range of historical evidence, Scheidel contends that only extreme violence and catastrophe have historically been able to bring more economic equality into the world. “ The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Tw

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