ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE

The definitive portrait of the America that few outsiders understand: the America that votes for George Bush, that supports the death penalty and gun rights, that believes in minimal government and long prison sentences, that pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol.

Este libro pretende explicar de manera clara y amena qué es la empresa o compañía y el papel que ha desempeñado a lo largo de la historia. Se centra sobre todo en los últimos cuatro siglos y en lo que es la joint stock company. No pretende moralizar sobre la labor de la empresa o compañia sino mostrarnos el papel predominante que ha jugado en nuestra sociedad a la hora de vender todo tipo de productos y a la hora de crear riqueza y de su distribucion. Por ello es una de las invenciones sociales que mas influencia ha tenido en el mundo y que al mismo tiempo ha sabido absorber el poder que genera.

Los autores de este crucial ensayo parten de una interesante pregunta: ¿los americanos son conservadores por naturaleza o sólo los son sus políticos? Para responder a esta cuestión se analiza con rigor y amenidad la llamada 'revolucion conservadora' de los ochenta que culmina con el ascenso de Bush Jr., y la naturaleza de los grupos de poder que han alimentado las distintas corrientes de opinion, hasta llegar a transformar el paradigma social estadounidense.

THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR*Shortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times and McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year Award*'This unique and fascinating history explains why the blame now being piled upon meritocracy for many social ills is misplaced-and that assigning responsibilities to the people best able to discharge them really is better than the time-honoured customs of corruption, patronage, nepotism and hereditary castes' Steven PinkerMeritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their status at birth. For much of history this was a revolutionary thought, but by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left?Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity.