Talking to my daughter about the economy: A brief history of capitalism

Yanis Varoufakis is telling me about the birth of his daughter, Xenia. “What I felt was an immense weight of responsibility,” he says. “Absolutely blind love and the sense of focusing on one individual.” But the experience didn’t make him feel like a different person. “It didn’t change my internal constitution or the way I looked at the world.”

Yanis Varoufakis Q&A: “My despondencies have become a source of energy”

The economist talks “Stairway to Heaven”, game theory, and how to make good predictions.

What’s your earliest memory?

The first time I flew in a passenger plane. I must have been about four and I was very impressed and very scared by it.

Not many authors write a book in nine days, and fewer still are likely to announce it in the prologue. Yanis Varoufakis has no qualms about doing so in this brief history of capitalism, structured around the device of talking to his daughter, Xenia, not long a teenager. It was first published a few years ago, when she was even younger, and has been updated for British readers following a further week’s writing.

“Utterly accessible, deeply humane and startlingly original – a potent democratic tool at the perfect time” Naomi Klein, author of NO IS NOT ENOUGH and THE SHOCK DOCTRINE

Yanis Varoufakis, the bestselling author of Adults in the Room, uses personal stories and famous myths to explain what economics is and why it has the power to change our world.