Book - antarahaldar.com

EVERYMAN

A bold retelling of the story of capitalism that treats the core concepts of economics as living, breathing beings, blending fiction and fact to upend 250 years of economic orthodoxy.

For a quarter of a millennium, Adam Smith’s invisible hand, ghostly and bloodied, has written the script of our lives. Everyman makes the ethereal ink in which it is etched legible by embodying the solitary, self-interested homo economicus—or “rational actor”—as Neo.

Told as an imaginative novel, Everyman traces global capitalism’s arc from boom to bust through Neo and his reckless apostles: Finn, the archetypal finance bro; Davos, the ambassador of globalization; Wash, the envoy to distant lands; and Tek, the quintessence of the tech industry. In a dazzling saga spanning generations and continents, Neo’s epic journey takes us from Chicago to New York to London, from Wall Street to Burning Man, from the factories of the Rust Belt to the farmlands of India, introducing us to the economic minds and political figures who have shaped our world, everyday people, and even runaway monsters.

An entertaining magical realist romp, Everyman touches on the most significant economic events in global history, from the Great Depression to the 2008 Financial Crisis, Britain’s Brexit vote to the inexorable rise of populism globally. Drawing on moral psychology, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and beyond, it animates the possibilities for how we might build on our capacity for cooperation to reinvent our broken institutions—and ourselves. By breaking form to ignite our moral imaginations, it presents a vision for rewriting our modern-day mythology, our economic theory. Everyman asks: by recasting economics’ strawman protagonist as a flesh-and-blood character, can we turn the plot of our lives from an inevitable tragedy to a redemption story and alter the destiny of our civilization?

“Economist Haldar debuts with a unique and enchanting treatise styled in the form of a novel. Harkening back to the allegorical economic treatises of the early modern period, Haldar sets out to ‘illuminat[e] the distortions’ and ‘reengage [the] moral imagination’ of her field. . . . In chapters themed around allusions to canonical stories and storytellers, from Macbeth to Hemingway, Haldar weaves her allegorical figures together with long passages of historical and theoretical context, so that, in a typical passage, the reader gets a discourse on the Eurozone and Davos, peppered with references to Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain and the music of ABBA. The result is charming, often funny, and wonderfully overstuffed with ideas.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A novel—and novelistic—approach to recounting the emergence of modern economics. . . . [Haldar’s] real subject is the rise of capitalism and ideas that all too often seem to be fixed laws of the universe rather than socially agreed upon arrangements. . . . A lively short course in economic history, and a subtle critique of its eternal verities.” —Kirkus Reviews

“How did a world emerge in which we give extraordinary powers to a human-made god we call ‘the market,’ and then allow that god to rule, even subdue, us? Everyman is a piercing and deeply learned condemnation of how thinking about economic life became impoverished by fantastic assumptions about human nature and efforts to divorce the understanding of economic life from society. A tragedy told in the mode of an epic, Haldar’s book is indispensable reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our contemporary economic and political dilemmas.” —Sven Beckert, Pulitzer Prize finalist, author, and Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University

“Everyman is not a book. It is an exorcism. For 250 years, economics has armed the bloodied hand that clenches our throat. Antara Haldar’s new book is a psychological drama unveiling an oppressive pseudoscience, a tragedy that refuses its own curtain. Read it and you will no longer ask who economics is for.” —Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece, author of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism

“Everyman is a fable of breathtaking sweep and sharp insight, a book that belongs on economics syllabi and bedside tables alike. Haldar also brilliantly pulls together the sparks of a revolution that is almost here.” —Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America

“Imagine if Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had been about economics and if Salman Rushdie had pondered the ghoulish progeny of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Imagine no more. Antara Haldar has done it for you: a delightful cartwheel through the dismal science and a plea for us to become masters of our economy and not the other way around.” —David Pilling, Financial Times Africa editor and author of The Growth Delusion

“A fun, funny, and brilliant romp through the history of modern economics Everyman reads like a novel but its core is about a battle of ideas, and whether economics truly helps people or merely grows capital. Haldar’s masterful book is a timely and urgent parable on the global fight against inequality.” —Ravi Agrawal, editor-in-chief, Foreign Policy

“Wonderful and witty: A powerful satire and a critique of the profession. This is the best critical fiction/nonfiction take on economics and finance that I have ever read. You will surely find Everyman enlightening and, I dare say, entertaining.” —Roman Frydman, Professor of Economics, New York University, and Founding Editor, Project Syndicate

Dear Reader,

Publishing is often a reductive art of categorization and comparison, but I dare any reader to do so with Antara Haldar’s Everyman. Singular in its conception, it should be read as a novel but absorbed and celebrated as an empirical and historical argument. Ultimately, Everyman achieves what a reader hopes to find in any book: A new understanding of the world but also a clarity for our moral role within it.

It has been an honor and a thrill to watch from the editorial sidelines as Antara has melded her academic work in economics, law, and philosophy into a bold and imaginative work of fiction. This book contains heroes and villains, moments of violence and heartbreak, scenes of revelation and redemption. And monsters lurk within these pages (the familiar bulls and bears of markets, the black swans and the gray rhinos of global events predictable and not, golden calves that enthrall and blind us, and a whole menagerie of others). This book teaches us how we might confront these monsters not only in our history, in our politics, and in our economies—but also within ourselves.

With thanks for reading,

Ben Loehnen