I’m going to digress from my ongoing survey of the roots of the 21st century crisis of capitalism to discuss a great new book with a similar theme — Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia. Brad tells the economic history of the “long 20th century” from 1870 to 2010, from the advent of the modern mass production economy to the dispiriting aftermath of the Great Recession. In other words, his narrative encompasses both humanity’s solving of the economic problem and the haunting arrival of the permanent problem.