Price Wars cover art

Price Wars

How Chaotic Markets Are Creating a Chaotic World

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options
Buy Now for £14.35

Buy Now for £14.35

About this listen

 War in Ukraine, a global hunger crisis, the West's cost of living crisis - the eruptions of 2022 were all too predictable. In Price Wars, Rupert Russell lays out just how these crises are connected and how many such events plunged the 2010s into a decade of turmoil.

Entering the eye of the storm - from the trenches of Russian separatist-controlled Donbas to bomb disposal squads in Mosul to cattle raiders in Kenya - Russell discovers a butterfly effect of chaos in the real world being driven by chaos in the commodities markets. The price of food and oil has the power to bankroll foreign invasions, plunge continents into poverty and spark revolutions, civil wars and refugee crises. And these prices, whistle-blowing hedge fund managers and Nobel Prize winners told him, have become irrational. In this thrilling exposé of the dark financial forces that rule our world, Russell takes us on adventure into the inner workings of global disorder unlike any other. International Politics & Government Sociology War Middle East Africa Capitalism

Critic reviews

Combining investigative courage with forensic analysis, Price Wars is a geopolitical masterpiece bursting with bite, originality and compassion (DAVID LAMMY MP)
If you're desperately searching for a single reason why Brexit, Trump or the war in Ukraine have caused such chaos, then sociologist and documentarian Rupert Russell might have the answer. [He] is a really engaging guide
Provocative . . . Price Wars arrives at quite an appropriate moment, culturally speaking, with many people emerging from the depths of the pandemic wondering whether what was long billed as a core strength of globalisation, its flexibility, had been revealed through supply-chain shocks and other disruptions to be a bit of a broken promise or even an excuse for market fragility (DAVID WALLACE-WELLS)
Price Wars is a totally original and stimulating read, part war zone reportage, part economic history and buzzing with ideas about the way markets work that will change your understanding of the world we live in (LIAQUAT AHAMED, author of LORDS OF FINANCE)
Rupert Russell guilefully searches for chaos and finds the butterfly effect of volatile prices operating everywhere. His stories are vivid and analysis airtight. In his hands, prices become quantum: we can know its present value or trend, but not both. Is our civilisation slowly boiling, or can we simplify our hyper-complexity and tame the chaos we have unleashed through integrated financial markets? This fine book provides compelling answers (DR PARAG KHANNA, author of CONNECTOGRAPHY and MOVE)
Rupert Russell's adventures into a host of modern apocalypses are retold in this thrilling page-turner. The result is an incredible synthesis that places global finance at the heart of chaos across the world (POLLY TOYNBEE)
An illuminating, sobering and endlessly fascinating look at the root causes and hidden connections between financial markets and some of the developing world's most wrenching crises. Fearlessly reported from conflict zones from separatist Ukrainian provinces to the Middle East, Russell compellingly draws a line between commodity manipulation on Wall Street and the chaos that fuels extremism and violence (JOBY WARRICK, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of BLACK FLAGS)
A skilfully conducted tour of the role of price, once unmoored from reality, in adding chaos to an already chaotic world. A fresh look at some of the mostly deeply held dogmas of economics, exploding many along the way (KIRKUS)
Wry, objective, scary, funny: let's hope it's not all true, but that seems unlikely (GRIFF RHYS JONES)
Deeply reported and thoroughly accessible, this investigation into the far-reaching consequences of economic speculation deserves a wide readership
Price Wars is a thorough and compelling account of political instability generated by the hyper-financialization of commodities. It could not be more timely (Zach D. Carter, author of THE PRICE OF PEACE: MONEY, DEMOCRACY, AND THE LIFE OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES)
All stars
Most relevant
A very clear and well written explanation of how all our lives are controlled by prices and the people who set them.

Insight into how our lives are controlled by prices.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Lots of the on the ground colour reporting is mediocre/not particularly relevant to the overall thesis, and there's a bunch of material that's covered better elsewhere about the history and ideas of the neoliberal turn. But the book's main argument is super important and dealt with accessibly albeit not in tremendoys depth: chaos in commodity markets is a major driver of conflict and political instability globally.

Strong, important main argument; some fluff

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.