"Capital in the twenty-first century" by Thomas Piketty

is out recently and drawing rave reviews. Paul Krugman says in http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...or-the-owners/ "It’s an amazing book; among other things, it does an awesome job of integrating economic growth, the factor distribution of income (between capital and labor), and the individual distribution of income into a common framework. (It’s all about r-g). "
There is a longer comprehensive review of the French edition by Branko Milanovic http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/52384...aper_52384.pdf
It is meant for the layman, does not need any background in economics ( I do hot have any). All the concepts are defined clearly and discussed thoroughly. At one point in Chapter 5, he assumes a result from standard economics but it does not play a strong role in the book and the statement is clear. I have been writing about it off and on in my blog. I recommend it strongly.

The Economist Book club has a series of posts on the book (registration needed to read them ). The latest is here http://www.economist.com/blogs/freee...3/book-clubs-1
If there is interest, I will post from other reviews and my comments.