And the Weak Suffer What They Must?

Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future

By: Yanis Varoufakis

Narrated by: Yanis Varoufakis, Leighton Pugh

A number one Sunday Times best seller [UK]

A titanic battle is being waged for Europe's integrity and soul, with the forces of reason and humanism losing out to growing irrationality, authoritarianism, and malice, promoting inequality and austerity. The whole world has a stake in a victory for rationality, liberty, democracy, and humanism.

In January 2015, Yanis Varoufakis, an economics professor teaching in Austin, Texas, was elected to the Greek parliament with more votes than any other member of parliament. He was appointed finance minister and, in the whirlwind five months that followed, everything he had warned about - the perils of the euro's faulty design, the European Union's shortsighted austerity policies, financialized crony capitalism, American complicity and rising authoritarianism - was confirmed as the "troika" (the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund, and European Commission) stonewalled his efforts to resolve Greece's economic crisis.

Here, Varoufakis delivers a fresh look at the history of Europe's crisis and America's central role in it. He presents the ultimate case against austerity, proposing concrete policies for Europe that are necessary to address its crisis and avert contagion to America, China, and the rest of the world. With passionate, informative, and at times humorous prose, he warns that the implosion of an admittedly crisis-ridden and deeply irrational European monetary union should, and can, be avoided at all cost.

©2017 Yanis Varoufakis (P)2017 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"[A] fiery maverick." (Fortune)

"The emerging rock-star of Europe s anti-austerity uprising." (The Daily Telegraph)

interesting perspective

it was well written and an interesting thousand foot perspective on 2008, globalization, financialization, and the development of the eu.

Excellent book!!!!

Absolutely love the book. Packed with info! Brilliantly written! Reading it once is not enough.

Europe's Economy

This was a pretty detailed book and Yanis really knows his stuff. Not only that, but he delivers in an easy to digest sort of way - good for people like me who don't have an economics background.

An exceptionally refreshing book.

Yanis give a serious historical analysis of the European economic politics. In an objective and non technical manner, he describes how the European economic crisis unfolded. But his book is useful for the citizens of non European countries also: I strongly recomend his book to everyone who wants to understand modern economic politics regardless of political orientation. Indeed, knowing "how things work" is useful for both democrats and republicans.

clear analysis of the European Crisis

Yanis Varoufakis is able to do what escapes most economists: explain clearly and honestly how we got the Euro Crisis and how to get out of it.

The only qualm I have with this production is that he did not read all of it himself. It was nice to hear him read the introduction and would have been perfect if he had read the rest of the book.

Not the weak, but the ignorant must suffer....

The audible version of the book was good, so no issue with the "performance". The book itself is a waste of time. I had read the many reviews before buying into it, and I don't understand that people believe that they understand economics after reading this book. Varoufakis certainly provides information on historical events, but none of this is chronologically sorted, and he keeps going back and forth between the present time and every preceding decade. Many of the events he describes as having still an economic impact today are unrelated or no longer valid in today's economy. And which economy are we talking about here? It is also noticeable that he doesn't like the Germans, especially the current German finance minister, Dr. Schaeuble, very much, who is about to retire from his post. True, the Germans were pushing Greece to finally get their (financial) acts in order. All in all, this is a long series of complaints, and he sees Greece as the weak who is the victim of all financial troubles they (still) find themselves in. Now, having been in Greece in June 2015 when the banks were near collapse, I have seen the impact and how this effects regular people. But are other countries and the financial standards that the Greek agreed to when they joined the European Union really to blame for it? Greece just simply keeps spending far more money than what they have. The Greek are the most wonderful people, and the country is so rich in culture and history. I wish they will find the strength and wisdom to get themselves out of this financial crisis without waiting for other countries to bail them out over and over again..