Slouching Towards Utopia
- Author
- J. Bradford DeLong
- Published
- 2022
- Pages
- 624
- Recommended
- Once
J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century (2022).
Why it’s on the list: DeLong’s economic history of 1870-2010, organised around the claim that the industrial research laboratory is one of the handful of institutions that changed the growth rate of the species. The macro frame around the lab-level case studies in the rest of the list.
Where I saw it: In the replies to Sarah Guo’s March 22, 2025 question on X — “is there a book / essay about environments that best support scientific discovery? Not about specifically bell labs, cavendish, xerox parc, los alamos - but why these places were so productive?” Kyle saved the link and reconstructed the full reply-thread list on 2026-09-17; the whole recovered list is on Is There a Book… (tweet).
Metadata checked: Open Library (2022; 624 pages).
Connections
- Historical Futurism — the portfolio idea.
- American Genesis — the same century, told as culture rather than as growth accounting.
- Scientific Research — the mechanism DeLong puts at the centre.
Not yet read.