"Pearlstein writes for the Washington Post and teaches public policy at George Mason University. He is not a Ph.D.-type economist, but he reads widely and aptly summarizes what academics such as Edward Banfield, James Coleman, Amartya Sen, and Robert Reich have written about trust and income distribution. He explains the Gini coefficient in reader-friendly terms and then presents easy-to-read tables showing the distribution of wealth and income around the globe. [...] Pearlstein has written a book that underscores difficult economic and social problems and suggests how to confront them with policies that are moral as well as practical. [...] This book is full of deep insights and good ideas."

"Pearlstein’s chief complaint is not the workings of capitalism per se but the excesses of inequality that characterize the particular form it has taken in the United States. Indeed, the core question of his book is just how much inequality capitalism can really accommodate without bursting at the seams. [...] Pearlstein argues that the right response to galloping inequality is a resurrection of political guardrails against monied interests and a return to robust forms of income redistribution. Under the heading 'A Better Capitalism,' he argues that we must overturn Citizens United through a constitutional amendment, develop a universal basic-income policy, force firms to share their profits with employees by insisting that performance-based compensation for executives be balanced with profit-sharing schemes for workers, equalize educational opportunity, increase competition in industry through more vigorous enforcement of anti-trust law and, above all, reduce the role of shareholder value in corporate governance. These policies would, Pearlstein believes, create a new political vocabulary, one conducive to a kinder and more sustainable capitalism. As a diagnosis of the ills of 'late capitalism,' this book delivers a trenchant critique of the ravages of inequality and a passionate cry for greater balance. It is not clear to me that capitalism will fail to survive these excesses. For those at the top, this form of capitalism is just fine, and those at the bottom have so little power to right the wrongs Pearlstein chronicles that his solutions seem appealing but far from imminent."