Why has the gap between the poor and the super-rich become such a gulf in the past few decades?

Why are so many so disillusioned with the political system?

Have we moved from democracy to plutocracy, and can anything be done?

Paul Krugman, one of the US’s most respected economists and outspoken commentators, traces America’s path to its present inequality, showing how an organized, hardline conservative movement took from the country the gains of Roosevelt’s New Deal and pushed it back to the age of the robber barons.

He also reveals how the right have exploited cultural, racial and economic divisions to their advantage ever since

and not just in America.

Krugman argues that the time is now ripe for another era of great reform; that America can be reclaimed form the right.

The Conscience of a Liberal lays out his vision of a fairer, more democratic and more equal society.

It will become a lodestone work of political thought.