Overview

A Number One Sunday Times Bestseller What happens when you take on the establishment? In Adults in the Room, the renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis gives the full, blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth. After being swept into power with the left-wing Syriza party, Varoufakis attempts to renegotiate Greece's relationship with the EU--and sparks a spectacular battle with global implications. Varoufakis's new position sends him ricocheting between mass demonstrations in Athens, closed-door negotiations in drab EU and IMF offices, and furtive meetings with power brokers in Washington, D.C. He consults and quarrels with Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Christine Lagarde, the economists Larry Summers and Jeffrey Sachs, and others, as he struggles to resolve Greece's debt crisis without resorting to punishing austerity measures. But despite the mass support of the Greek people and the simple logic of Varoufakis's arguments, he succeeds only in provoking the fury of Europe's elite. Varoufakis's unvarnished memoir is an urgent warning that the economic policies once embraced by the EU and the White House have failed--and spawned authoritarianism, populist revolt, and instability throughout the Western world. Adults in the Room is an extraordinary tale of brinkmanship, hypocrisy, collusion, and betrayal that will shake the global establishment to its foundations.

Full Product Details

9780374538057

Table of Contents

Reviews

Varoufakis has written one of the greatest political memoirs of all time . . . it is the inside story of high politics told by anoutsider . . . Varoufakis gives one of the most accurate and detaileddescriptions of modern power ever written. --Paul Mason, The Guardian A stylish memoir . . . deeply personal and very well written, with an impressive array of literary allusions . . . [Varoufakis] outlines a cogent case against the austerity heaped on Greece. --Kevin Featherstone, Financial Times Riveting . . . An extraordinary account of low cunning at the heart of Greece's 2015 financial bailout . . . [Varoufakis is] a motorcycling, leather jacketed former academic and self-styled rebel who took pleasure in winding up the besuited political class . . . An admirably believable depiction of a Greek and European tragedy. --John Kampfner, The Guardian Adults in the Room is a book that anyone interested in modern European politics should read. To say it is the best memoir of the Eurozone crisis is an understatement. It is a devastating indictment of [the] current state of Europe and a fascinating inside account of the logic of reformist politics and its limits and why it keeps going anyway . . . Varoufakis's account of the operations of EU 'decision-making' is truly shocking. He delivers a truly shocking anatomy of an apparatus bent on perpetuating its own bad logic and excluding alternatives. --Adam Tooze, Shelby Cullom Davis Chair of History and Director of the European Institute at Columbia University, and author of The Deluge One of my few heroes. As long as people like Varoufakis are around, there still is hope. --Slavoj Zizek A very, very clever person, and in the basic argument about what's been going on in Europe I think he's right. --Martin Wolf An outstanding economist and political analyst. --Noam Chomsky The most interesting man in the world. --Business Insider The Thucydides of our time. --Jeffrey Sachs

Author Information

Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the cofounder of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, that is campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. He is the author of And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and The Global Minotaur. After teaching for many years in the United States, Britain, and Australia, he is currently a professor of economics at the University of Athens.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available