The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age -- Tim Wu, Paperback

From the man who coined the term net neutrality, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our economic and political future.

We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms--big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the curse of bigness can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself. History suggests that tolerance of inequality and failing to control excessive corporate power may prompt the rise of populism, nationalism, extremist politicians, and fascist regimes. In short, as Wu warns, we are in grave danger of repeating the signature errors of the twentieth century.

In The Curse of Bigness, Tim Wu, special assistant to President Biden for technology and competition policy, explains how figures like Brandeis and Theodore Roosevelt first confronted the democratic threats posed by the great trusts of the Gilded Age--but the lessons of the Progressive Era were forgotten in the last 40 years. He calls for recovering the lost tenets of the trustbusting age as part of a broader revival of American progressive ideas as we confront the fallout of persistent and extreme economic inequality.

Author: Tim Wu
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Published: 11/13/2018
Pages: 154
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.40h x 5.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780999745465

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 10/01/2018
Publishers Weekly 09/24/2018

About the Author
Tim Wu is a policy advocate, a professor at Columbia Law School, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He worked on competition policy in the Obama White House and the Federal Trade Commission, served as senior enforcement counsel at the New York Office of the Attorney General, and worked at the Supreme Court for Justice Stephen Breyer. He is the author of The Master Switch (2010) and The Attention Merchants (2016).