The Aristocracy of Talent
How Meritocracy Made the Modern World
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The Aristocracy of Talent
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Cowley
About this listen
The Times (UK) book of the year!
Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left?
In The Aristocracy of Talent, esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities, and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system.
Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.
©2021 Adrian Wooldridge (P)2022 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 515
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 452
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 450
In the 18th century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannons, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalized racism, and caused millions to die from starvation. British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial "gift" was designed in Britain's interests alone.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An entertaining and provocative history
- By James Moseley on 01-07-20
By: Shashi Tharoor
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Bourgeois Equality
- How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World
- By: Deirdre N. McCloskey
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 29 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 35
Few economists or historians write like McCloskey - her ability to invest the facts of economic history with the urgency of a novel, or of a leading case at law, is unmatched. She summarizes modern economics and modern economic history with verve and lucidity yet sees through to the really big scientific conclusion. Not matter, but ideas. Big books don't come any more ambitious or captivating than Bourgeois Equality.
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5 out of 5 stars
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How the world got rich
- By Andrew Cooper-Sansone on 01-26-23
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America
- Imagine a World Without Her
- By: Dinesh D'Souza
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,100
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 987
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 979
Is America a source of pride, as Americans have long held, or shame, as Progressives allege? Beneath an innocent exterior, are our lives complicit in a national project of theft, expropriation, oppression, and murder? Or is America still the hope of the world? New York Times best-selling author Dinesh D'Souza says these questions are no mere academic exercise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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We can think for ourselves
- By score bags on 06-21-14
By: Dinesh D'Souza
-
The Lies That Bind
- Rethinking Identity
- By: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Narrated by: Kwame Anthony Appiah
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 195
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 166
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 166
We all know how identities - notably, those of nationality, class, culture, race, and religion - are at the root of global conflict, but the more elusive truth is that these identities are created by conflict in the first place. In provocative, entertaining chapters, Kwame Anthony Appiah interweaves keen-edged argument with engrossing historical tales and reveals the tangled contradictions within the stories that define us.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not full of SJW nonsense
- By Frank on 10-22-18
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The Fourth Revolution
- The Global Race to Reinvent the State
- By: John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 98
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 80
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 77
From the best-selling authors of The Right Nation, a visionary argument that our current crisis in government is nothing less than the fourth radical transition in the history of the nation-state. Dysfunctional government: It' s become a cliché, and most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a seriously limited view of things. In fact, there have been three great revolutions in government in the history of the modern world.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
A must read for everyone wondering whats going?
- By Truth-be-told on 03-30-15
By: John Micklethwait, and others
-
This Noble Land
- My Vision For America
- By: James A. Michener
- Narrated by: Arthur Addison
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 42
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 39
This Noble Land is Michener's most personal statement about America, an examination of the issues that threaten to fragment and undermine the nation - racial conflict, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the decline of education, the inadequacies of our health care system - as well as a thought-provoking prescription for sustaining our "outstanding success". First published shortly before Michener's death, This Noble Land stands as a wake-up call for a troubled era, infused with the wisdom and passion of a lifetime.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A startling realization
- By Amazon Customer on 08-15-15
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Liberal Fascism
- The Secret History of the American Left
- By: Jonah Goldberg
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,183
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 767
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 767
"Fascists", "Brownshirts", "jackbooted stormtroopers" - such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book
- By Mark on 05-10-08
By: Jonah Goldberg
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The Radicalism of the American Revolution
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 319
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 256
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 256
Grand in scope, rigorous in its arguments, and elegantly synthesizing 30 years of scholarship, Gordon S. Wood's Pulitzer Prize–winning book analyzes the social, political, and economic consequences of 1776. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood depicts not just a break with England, but the rejection of an entire way of life: of a society with feudal dependencies, a politics of patronage, and a world view in which people were divided between the nobility and "the Herd."
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Changed the Way I Think
- By Cynthia on 01-04-14
By: Gordon S. Wood
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Korea
- The Impossible Country
- By: Daniel Tudor
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 134
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 113
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 112
Long overshadowed by Japan and China, South Korea is a small country that happens to be one of the great national success stories of the postwar period. From a failed state with no democratic tradition, ruined and partitioned by war, and sapped by a half-century of colonial rule, South Korea transformed itself in just 50 years into an economic powerhouse and a democracy that serves as a model for other countries. With no natural resources and a tradition of authoritarian rule, Korea managed to accomplish a second Asian miracle.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing book
- By Antoine on 12-14-18
By: Daniel Tudor
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Marx's General
- The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels
- By: Tristram Hunt
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 17 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 38
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
Friedrich Engels is one of the most intriguing and contradictory figures of the 19th century. Born to a prosperous Prussian mercantile family, he spent his life working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable upper-middle-class existence of a Victorian gentleman.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not many choices here anyways.
- By Prof. Neil Larsen on 02-16-13
By: Tristram Hunt
-
How the Scots Invented the Modern World
- By: Arthur Herman
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 491
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 436
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 437
Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the 18th and 19th centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics - contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. This book is not just about Scotland: it is an exciting account of the origins of the modern world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Eagerly Awaited Audiobook
- By Lulu on 09-01-16
By: Arthur Herman
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The 10 Big Lies About America
- Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation
- By: Michael Medved
- Narrated by: Michael Medved
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 98
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 64
In this bold and brilliantly argued book, acclaimed author and talk-radio host Michael Medved zeroes in on 10 of the biggest fallacies that millions of Americans believe about our country - in spite of incontrovertible facts to the contrary. In The 10 Big Lies About America, Medved pinpoints the most pernicious pieces of America-bashing disinformation that pollute current debates about the economy, race, religion in politics, the Iraq war, and other contentious issues.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Truth
- By Dominique Bessette on 01-23-17
By: Michael Medved
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The Lost History of Liberalism
- From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century
- By: Helena Rosenblatt
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
The Lost History of Liberalism challenges our most basic assumptions about a political creed that has become a rallying cry - and a term of derision - in today's increasingly divided public square. Taking listeners from ancient Rome to today, Helena Rosenblatt traces the evolution of the words "liberal" and "liberalism", revealing the heated debates that have taken place over their meaning. In this timely and provocative book, Rosenblatt debunks the popular myth of liberalism as a uniquely Anglo-American tradition centered on individual rights.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Educative and informative
- By Amazon Customer on 06-05-19
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A Fierce Discontent
- The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920
- By: Michael McGerr
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
The Progressive Era witnessed the nation's most convulsive upheaval, a time of radicalism far beyond the Revolution or anything since. In response to the birth of modern America, one small group of middle-class Americans seized control of the nation and attempted to remake society from bottom to top. They accomplished an astonishing range of triumphs, yet the progressive movement collapsed as the war came to an end amid race riots, strikes, high inflation, and a frenzied Red scare.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
A well balanced take
- By Ryan Mooney on 04-17-21
By: Michael McGerr
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The Mis-Education of the Negro
- By: Carter Goodwin Woodson
- Narrated by: Carter Goodwin Woodson
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 664
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 541
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 540
"The Mis-Education of the Negro" is a book originally published in 1933 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The thesis of Dr. Woodson's book is that blacks of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools. This conditioning, he claims, causes blacks to become dependent and to seek out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part. He challenges his readers to become autodidacts and to "do for themselves", regardless of what they were taught.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good Book- Horribly Narrated
- By FreeSpirit_37 on 02-13-18
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What listeners say about The Aristocracy of Talent
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- lll
- 11-23-23
Finally, an answer.
A plausible diagnosis of the disease eating at the west, and especially the English speaking world.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
- A
- 04-05-23
...
really, you're making users write a review just to rate a book they read? Pathetic.
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