Small Is Beautiful cover art

Small Is Beautiful

A Study of Economics as if People Mattered

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Small Is Beautiful

By: E F Schumacher
Narrated by: John Sackville
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About this listen

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Small is Beautiful by E F Schumacher.

How does our economic system impact the way we live? Does it really affect what we truly care about?


Oxford economist E. F. Schumacher provides an enlightening study of our economic system and its purpose, challenging the current state of excessive consumption in our society. Offering a crucial message for the modern world struggling to balance economic growth with the human costs of globalisation, Small Is Beautiful puts forward the revolutionary yet viable case for building our economies around the needs of communities, not corporations.

‘One of the 100 most influential books published since World War II’ The Times Literary Supplement

Economics Macroeconomics Politics & Government Taxation Socialism Capitalism

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Critic reviews

A book of heart and hope and downright common sense about the future. (Peter Lewis)
All stars
Most relevant
a must read for anyone who is able to vote in an election. we can solve the world problems but we've got to make the idea of a tiny cadre of billionaires in charge, utterly disgusting. this book tells you how.

Economic Enlightenment

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Easily one of the very best books you'd ever read. The concepts discussed in this book, collectively, should be part of every school curriculum.

Read (listen to) this book!

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Really great book. Wish the world was thinking more like that today. Gives a very wide and holistic perspective of economics in the context of society and humanity. Lots of varied ideas and well supported arguments Analytic captivating, educational and down to earth.

Amazing book

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Thoroughly researched, well considered, and well argued. The world would be a better place if everyone absorbed this book.

Everyone should read/listen to this book.

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The basic premise is dealt with slowly in the opening chapters. The rest of the book seems to be a rambling appendix of references and quotes proving the author reads and thinks a lot. Meandering toward a point often made with a a single comment, and repeatedly qualified with quotes and counterargument, seemingly for the sale of it.

From another age.

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