Running for Your Life: And the Weak Suffer What They Must? By Yanis Varoufakis

So you live in a nation where either Anthony Weiner or Donald Trump command the headlines – not just in the tabloids but in the papers of record too.

Americans may be racing to the heavens in Silicon Valley (SpaceX and Blue Origin, a colony on Mars, anyone?), but in political, economic and social news, it’s a race to the bottom. That’s not so much a comment about American global power or domestic economic health. Rather about the quality of its news and commentary.

Then there is “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?” by Yanis Varoufakis, a onetime finance minister of Greece. In a single volume published by Nation Books (Hachette), Varoufakis follows the money in a well-written expose of surprising literary flourish on the modern global economy, with the US and Europe at its center.

Consider this splash of wisdom, in which he quotes from Thucydides’s Pelopennsian War, a portion that was underlined by John Maynard Keynes:

“There it was underlined in pencil, the famous passage in which powerful Athenian generals explained to the helpless Melians why ‘rights’ are only pertinent ‘between equals in power’ and, for this reason, they were about ‘to do as they pleased with them.’ It was because ‘the strong actually do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.’”

A harsh concept. But words to learn by. You won’t go wrong in getting a firmer grasp of where we are – and where we are heading – than by sitting down and reading this book.


Next: Running for Your Life: September!