December 1, 2021
The consequences of unfettered avarice. New York Times global economics correspondent Goodman mounts a scathing critique of the greed, narcissism, and hypocrisy that characterize those in "the stratosphere of the globe-trotting class," many of whom gather at the annual World Economic Forum held in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos. Davos Man--an epithet coined by political scientist Samuel Huntington--is "an unusual predator whose power comes in part from his keen ability to adopt the guise of an ally." The "relentless plunder" perpetrated by Davos Man, Goodman argues persuasively, "is the decisive force behind the rise of right-wing populist movements around the world," leading to widening economic inequality, intense public anger, and dire threats to democracy. The author closely examines five individuals: private equity magnate Stephen Schwarzman; JPMorgan Chase executive Jamie Dimon; asset manager Larry Fink; Amazon's Jeff Bezos; and Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, who promotes himself as "the most empathetic corporate chieftain." At the same time that these men broadcast their concern for social justice, they enrich themselves by manipulating economies, lobbying politicians, eviscerating regulations, weakening government oversight, and extracting huge tax benefits. Fink's professed concern for the environment, for example, is really an alarm about risk to investments: "In a world under assault by rising seas and turbulent weather, how safe was real estate, and what were the implications for mortgage-backed securities?" During the mortgage crisis, Schwarzman's company bought foreclosed properties, amassing a large inventory that it leased to desperate renters. With their yachts, multiple mansions, and private islands, they prove themselves "unmoored from the rest of human experience." Reining in Davos Man, Goodman asserts, "can happen only through the exercise of democracy--by unleashing strategies centered on boosting wages and working opportunities, by erecting new forms of social insurance, by reviving and enforcing antitrust law, by modernizing the tax code to focus on wealth." An urgent, timely, and compelling message with nearly limitless implications.

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December 13, 2021
Tax dodging, chicanery, and deceit are the stock-in-trade of supposedly humanitarian plutocrats according to this sardonic denunciation. Goodman (Past Due), a New York Times reporter, takes aim at billionaires who attend World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland, to fret over global crises while sidestepping their own responsibility for them. These “Davos men,” he writes, “not only prosper but profiteer off everyone else’s suffering.” He admonishes Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos for failing to give workers adequate personal protective equipment and paid sick leave, for example, and Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman for “jacking up rents in a pandemic.” But the main charges are simple greed and hypocrisy: while Davos billionaires extol philanthropy and social justice, Goodman writes, they lobby against taxes and regulations that would trim their fortunes—and thus deny governments the capacity to solve problems by redistributing wealth, improving public services, and taming capitalism’s excesses. Goodman’s reportage doesn’t skimp on irony—attendees at one Davos event virtue-signaled on refugee issues by being “led around in the dark while blindfolded as angry officials demand papers”—but his critique is overbroad and unoriginal, with billionaires being cast into the roles of all-purpose villains. It’s colorful, but the rehash of wealthy men’s perfidy falls short of a cogent or fair analysis of their influence.

"A meticulously researched, clearly reported and truly infuriating history of the way the top 1% of the world has systematically arranged the way societies operate in order to become even richer, all to the detriment of the rest of us. ... The book serves as a call to arms and an invitation to fight back against the continued unabashed pillaging of all economies by those who least need it." — San Francisco Chronicle

"Powerful. ... Goodman's reporting is biting and bitterly funny. ... Davos Man shows us that today's extreme wealth is inextricably linked to a great crime, perhaps the greatest one of this century: the hijacking of our democracy." — Washington Post

"Excellent. ... An angry, powerful look at the economic inequality that's been brought into sharp relief by the COVID-19 pandemic. ... A powerful, fiery book, and it could well be an essential one." — NPR.org

"The Times's global economics correspondent profiles five billionaires (along with workers and migrants across the world) to show how their exploitation of the pandemic has exacerbated inequality across the globe." — New York Times Book Review

"Well-written and well-reported. ... A passionate denunciation of the mega-rich." — The Economist

"A biting, uproarious yet vital and deadly serious account of the profound damage the billionaire class is inflicting on the world. Peter S. Goodman guides the reader through the hidden stories and twisted beliefs of some of the titans of finance and industry, who continually rationalize their bad behavior to themselves." — JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics

"Unflinching and authoritative, Peter Goodman's Davos Man will be read a hundred years from now as a warning, bellowed from the blessed side of the velvet rope, about a slow-motion scandal that spans the globe. Deliciously rich with searing detail, the clarity is reminiscent of Tom Wolfe, let loose in the Alps, in search of hypocrisies and vanities." — EVAN OSNOS, National Book Award-winning author of Age of Ambition and Wildland

"One of the great financial investigative journalists, Peter S. Goodman delivers a meticulously detailed account of how the billionaire class has hijacked the world's economy, feasting on calamity, shirking taxes, all the while spouting bromides about compassionate capitalism. I so wish this tale of limitless greed and hypocrisy was a novel or a mini-series and not the truth about the world in which we live. Reader, prepare to be enraged." — BARBARA DEMICK, author of Nothing to Envy and Eat the Buddha

"New York Times global economics correspondent Goodman mounts a scathing critique of the greed, narcissism, and hypocrisy that characterize those in 'the stratosphere of the globe-trotting class'... An urgent, timely, and compelling message with nearly limitless implications." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Impressively detailed. ... Very readable, extensively reported. ... A well-researched and lively explanation of how the global economy works, and the turning points that have enabled profiteering by the ultra-rich while undermining societal and democratic institutions." — Charter

"Goodman is a skilled reporter whose stories of private affluence and public squalor are filled with detail and human interest." — Wall Street Journal