Clive Crook, Columnist

The Year of Piketty

Piketty's economics left a lot to be desired, but his timing was fantastic.

December 28, 2014 at 11:00 PM UTC

Clive Crook is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering economics. Previously, he was deputy editor of the Economist and chief Washington commentator for the Financial Times.

Wrong, but in a really great way.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

Last month the Financial Times chose Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," a study of the underlying dynamics of inequality, as its Business Book of the Year. The honor rather understates the book's impact. Forget "business book." "Capital" was the non-fiction publishing sensation of the year, and maybe of the decade or more. When has a work of its kind ever been so rapturously received?

Yet what a perplexing phenomenon this was. Now that the acclaim and the subsequent backlash have subsided, the Year of Piketty seems worth another moment's reflection.