A history of the world in seven cheap things A guide to capitalism, nature, and the future of the planet

Patel (Univ. of Texas at Austin) and Moore (SUNY Binghamton) are concerned with social justice and developing a better world ecology. Their brief, highly accessible world history describes processes intertwined with capitalism's growth and many resulting negative effects leading to crises. Their "ecology of capitalism" depends on seven highly interdependent "things": nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives. But they include Roman, feudal, Soviet, and Chinese examples. They use "cheapening" to denote how capitalists have gained and maintained power and profit. In their history, the benefits of growth are briefly mentioned, like increased food supplies and incomes, but most of the emphasis is on harms, especially to indigenous peoples, slaves, women, and nature. Well-selected quotes from historic documents and literature, some art, a few charts, and many references provide support. The authors discuss historical and philosophical rationalizations of harms that lead to crises. In their view, which doesn't fit most economists' approaches, crises of hunger, slavery, and climate change can lead over time to revolutionary reimagining of life after capitalism, which may include briefly described "reparation ecology." Summing Up: Optional. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Elaine Johnson Peterson, California State University Stanislaus

Patel (The Value of Nothing) and Moore (Capitalism's Ecologies) present an intriguing approach to analyzing today's planetary emergencies. The focus is on how modern commerce and international trade have transformed, governed, and devastated the planet by designing methods of cheaply making and using seven key things: nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives. The authors define "cheap" not as less expensive but as a set of strategies created by capitalism to control the web of life with the lowest compensation possible-something that is always a battleground and a short-term solution. The work nicely blends ecological research with broad stroke history to demonstrate how humans have invented strategies to make the world safe for capitalism. Beginning with the emergence of humans in the climatological Holocene era (12,000-11,500 years ago), the authors assert that the current century has been influenced by numerous abrupt and irreversible changes that climatological system scientists refer to as state shift. In their answer to this crisis, the authors entreat for a new intellectual state shift to deal with the looming human-made epochal disaster. This work provides a serious addition to the conversation about the ultimate fate of the planet. Simon Mattacks's subtly British-accented, steadily paced reading helps maintain interest in this important work that will appeal to fans of Thomas Robert Malthus's 1798 classic "An Essay on the Principle of Population," Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, Bruce Scott's Capitalism, and -David Hone's Putting the -Genie Back. VERDICT Essential for all university libraries supporting climatological sciences, economics, and business curricula.-Dale Farris, Groves, TX © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.