Literature and Inequality - by Daniel Shaviro (Paperback)

About the Book

Great works of literature, by the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton, can help us to better understand the social ramifications of high-end inequality - not just in the authors' eras but today.

Book Synopsis

Great works of literature, by the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton, can help us to better understand the social ramifications of high-end inequality - not just in the authors' eras but today.

Review Quotes

"Literature and Inequality is an eye-opening and powerfully affecting book. By rereading literary classics through the lens of high-end inequality, and by emphasizing their fascination with the contest between patrimonial complacency and meritocratic ambition, Shaviro opens a new window into familiar texts. And by confronting us with the lessons of his readings, Shaviro compels a new reckoning with the rising high-end inequality and regenerated caste system that increasingly plague our own age." -Daniel Markovits, Guido Calabresi Professor of Law, Yale Law School, USA, and Author of The Meritocracy Trap

Shaviro has successfully made a case for the study of creative literature by economists and tax specialists, who can now look at the history of literature as a history of their own. - Robert Appelbaum, British Tax Review (2021)

About the Author

Daniel Shaviro is the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University Law School, where his research focuses on tax policy and distributive justice. He is also the author of the satirical novel Getting It.