Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” Wins Council on Foreign Relations Award

Thomas Piketty has won the fourteenth annual Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award for his horrific book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century,

For the many problems with the Piketty book, see Problems with Piketty: The Flaws and Fallacies in Capital in the Twenty-First Century  by Mark Hendrickson. (I interviewed Hendrickson here.)

The award includes a cash payment of $15,000 and on December 9 CFR will honor Piketty at a cocktail reception hosted by Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs and chair of the independent award jury.

In granting the award, the CFR focused on Piketty's absurd confusion and concerns about inequality, as if global equality was possible or desirable.

“Rising economic inequality has become one of the defining features of the contemporary era, and nothing has done more to frame the discussion than Piketty’s masterwork of data collection and analysis—whether or not one agrees with his conclusions and recommendations,” said Gideon Rose.

Members of the Arthur Ross Book Award Jury are:

Gideon Rose (Chair)
Peter G. Peterson Chair and Editor, Foreign Affairs

Lisa Anderson
President, American University in Cairo

Sumit Ganguly
Director, Center on American and Global Security, Indiana University, Bloomington

Susan K. Purcell
Director, Center for Hemispheric Policy, University of Miami

Mary Elise Sarotte
Professor of International Relations and History and Dean’s Professor of History, University of Southern California; Research Associate, Harvard University

Calvin G. Sims
President and Chief Executive Officer, International House

Andrew Ross Sorkin
Columnist and Assistant Business Editor, New York Times

  -RW