-
Big Business
- A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero
- Narrated by: Steve Edwards
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $24.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Great Stagnation
- How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 2 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, median wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess?
-
-
A nice fast thought-provoking walk-through
- By Philo on 07-15-13
By: Tyler Cowen
-
Stubborn Attachments
- A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this new audiobook, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals, Cowen argues that our reason and common sense can help free us of the faulty ideas that hold us back as people and as a society. Stubborn Attachments, at its heart, makes the contemporary moral case for economic growth and delivers a great dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities.
-
-
Causal vs casual
- By Amazon Customer on 11-24-18
By: Tyler Cowen
-
The Complacent Class
- The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a signature American trait. Our willingness to move, take risks, and adapt to change have produced a dynamic economy and a tradition of innovation from Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs. The problem, according to legendary blogger, economist, and best-selling author Tyler Cowen, is that Americans today have broken from this tradition - we're working harder than ever to avoid change.
-
-
MUST READ
- By RJW on 05-06-17
By: Tyler Cowen
-
Talent
- How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World
- By: Tyler Cowen, Daniel Gross
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do you find talent with a creative spark? To what extent can you predict human creativity, or is human creativity something irreducible before our eyes, perhaps to be spotted or glimpsed by intuition, but unique each time it appears? Obsessed with these questions, renowned economist Tyler Cowen and venture capitalist and entrepreneur Daniel Gross set out to study the art and science of finding talent at the highest level: the people with the creativity, drive, and insight to transform an organization and make everyone around them better.
-
-
Stale information
- By Read often on 05-24-22
By: Tyler Cowen, and others
-
Average is Over
- Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The widening gap between rich and poor means dealing with one big, uncomfortable truth: If you're not at the top, you're at the bottom. The global labor market is changing radically thanks to growth at the high end and the low. About three quarters of the jobs created in the United States since the great recession pay only a bit more than minimum wage. Still, the United States has more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever, and we continue to mint them.
-
-
Computers Will Take Jobs, Including Book Narrators
- By Sara on 04-20-17
By: Tyler Cowen
-
The Right
- The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism
- By: Matthew Continetti
- Narrated by: Carl Sayles
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Matthew Continetti gives a sweeping account of movement conservatism’s evolution, from the Progressive Era through the present. He tells the story of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, until they began to buckle under new pressures, resembling national populist movements. Drawing out the tensions between the desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism’s past, the more one becomes convinced of its future.
-
-
Authors bias shows
- By Mary Lou Vodar on 04-30-22
-
The Great Stagnation
- How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 2 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, median wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess?
-
-
A nice fast thought-provoking walk-through
- By Philo on 07-15-13
By: Tyler Cowen
-
Stubborn Attachments
- A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Jeremy Arthur
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this new audiobook, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals, Cowen argues that our reason and common sense can help free us of the faulty ideas that hold us back as people and as a society. Stubborn Attachments, at its heart, makes the contemporary moral case for economic growth and delivers a great dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities.
-
-
Causal vs casual
- By Amazon Customer on 11-24-18
By: Tyler Cowen
-
The Complacent Class
- The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a signature American trait. Our willingness to move, take risks, and adapt to change have produced a dynamic economy and a tradition of innovation from Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs. The problem, according to legendary blogger, economist, and best-selling author Tyler Cowen, is that Americans today have broken from this tradition - we're working harder than ever to avoid change.
-
-
MUST READ
- By RJW on 05-06-17
By: Tyler Cowen
-
Talent
- How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World
- By: Tyler Cowen, Daniel Gross
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do you find talent with a creative spark? To what extent can you predict human creativity, or is human creativity something irreducible before our eyes, perhaps to be spotted or glimpsed by intuition, but unique each time it appears? Obsessed with these questions, renowned economist Tyler Cowen and venture capitalist and entrepreneur Daniel Gross set out to study the art and science of finding talent at the highest level: the people with the creativity, drive, and insight to transform an organization and make everyone around them better.
-
-
Stale information
- By Read often on 05-24-22
By: Tyler Cowen, and others
-
Average is Over
- Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
- By: Tyler Cowen
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The widening gap between rich and poor means dealing with one big, uncomfortable truth: If you're not at the top, you're at the bottom. The global labor market is changing radically thanks to growth at the high end and the low. About three quarters of the jobs created in the United States since the great recession pay only a bit more than minimum wage. Still, the United States has more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever, and we continue to mint them.
-
-
Computers Will Take Jobs, Including Book Narrators
- By Sara on 04-20-17
By: Tyler Cowen
-
The Right
- The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism
- By: Matthew Continetti
- Narrated by: Carl Sayles
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Matthew Continetti gives a sweeping account of movement conservatism’s evolution, from the Progressive Era through the present. He tells the story of how conservatism began as networks of intellectuals, developing and institutionalizing a vision that grew over time, until they began to buckle under new pressures, resembling national populist movements. Drawing out the tensions between the desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism, Continetti argues that the more one studies conservatism’s past, the more one becomes convinced of its future.
-
-
Authors bias shows
- By Mary Lou Vodar on 04-30-22
-
The Case Against Education
- Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
- By: Bryan Caplan
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Despite being immensely popular - and immensely lucrative - education is grossly overrated. In this explosive book, Bryan Caplan argues that the primary function of education is not to enhance students' skill but to certify their intelligence, work ethic, and conformity - in other words, to signal the qualities of a good employee.
-
-
Longwinded, possibly worth skimming
- By Steve Iacobbo on 02-28-20
By: Bryan Caplan
-
The Decadent Society
- How We Became a Victim of Our Own Success
- By: Ross Douthat
- Narrated by: Ross Douthat
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing - how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis.
-
-
Another Liberal Arts Intellectual who does not rea
- By Trebla on 03-24-20
By: Ross Douthat
-
Rationality
- What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species - cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions.
-
-
Kinda disappointed
- By Trebla on 10-02-21
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Fiat Standard
- The Debt Slavery Alternative to Human Civilization
- By: Saifedean Ammous
- Narrated by: Saifedean Ammous, Guy Swann
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Fiat Standard, world-renowned economist Saifedean Ammous applies his unique analytical lens to the fiat monetary system, explaining it as a feat of engineering and technology just as he did for bitcoin in his global best seller The Bitcoin Standard. This time, Ammous delves into the world's earlier shift from the gold standard to today's system of government-backed fiat money—outlining the fiat standard's purposes and failures; deriving the wider economic, political, and social implications of its use; and examining how bitcoin will affect it over time.
-
-
Mixes his extreme right wing views with Bitcoin
- By Yaqub Ali on 04-26-22
By: Saifedean Ammous
-
The Elephant in the Brain
- Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
- By: Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson
- Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus, we don't like to talk, or even think, about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain".
-
-
unfiltered perspective
- By Anonymous User on 01-04-19
By: Kevin Simler, and others
-
The Myth of the Rational Voter
- Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
- By: Bryan Caplan
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book.
-
-
Refreshing
- By Lyle Wincentsen on 05-12-11
By: Bryan Caplan
-
How Innovation Works
- And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: Matt Ridley
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen, hard to summon into existence to order, yet inevitable and inexorable when it does happen.
-
-
Bad scholarship and bias that overwhelms his facts
- By RickyF on 07-01-20
By: Matt Ridley
-
Why Nations Fail
- The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
- By: Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?
-
-
Important themes, with blind spots
- By Ryan on 09-01-12
By: Daron Acemoglu, and others
-
The Power Law
- Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
- By: Sebastian Mallaby
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Innovations rarely come from “experts.” Elon Musk was not an “electric car person” before he started Tesla. When it comes to improbable innovations, a legendary tech VC told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be predicted, it can only be discovered. It is the nature of the venture-capital game that most attempts at discovery fail, but a very few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else.
-
-
Excellent content, excellent voice
- By Yin on 05-27-22
-
One Billion Americans
- The Case for Thinking Bigger
- By: Matthew Yglesias
- Narrated by: Matthew Yglesias
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would actually make America great: more people. From one of our foremost policy writers, One Billion Americans is the provocative yet logical argument that if we aren’t moving forward, we’re losing. Vox founder Yglesias invites us to think bigger, while taking the problems of decline seriously. What really contributes to national prosperity should not be controversial: supporting parents and children, welcoming immigrants and their contributions, and exploring creative policies that support growth.
-
-
Novelty and Vision
- By Andrew on 09-16-20
By: Matthew Yglesias
-
Against the Gods
- The Remarkable Story of Risk
- By: Peter L. Bernstein
- Narrated by: Mike Fraser
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this unique exploration of the role of risk in our society, Peter Bernstein argues that the notion of bringing risk under control is one of the central ideas that distinguishes modern times from the distant past. Against the Gods chronicles the remarkable intellectual adventure that liberated humanity from oracles and soothsayers by means of the powerful tools of risk management that are available to us today. This brand new audio edition of Bernstein's classic work is masterfully narrated by Mike Fraser.
-
-
Glad it finally got here
- By bda31175 on 10-16-21
-
The Founders
- The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley
- By: Jimmy Soni
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning author and biographer Jimmy Soni explores PayPal’s turbulent early days. With hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to thousands of pages of internal material, he shows how the seeds of so much of what shapes our world today—fast-scaling digital start-ups, cashless currency concepts, mobile money transfer—were planted two decades ago. He also reveals the stories of countless individuals who were left out of the front-page features and banner headlines but who were central to PayPal’s success.
-
-
Wonderful, Engaging & Insightful
- By Ismael Becerra on 02-26-22
By: Jimmy Soni
Publisher's Summary
An against-the-grain polemic on American capitalism from New York Times best-selling author Tyler Cowen.
We love to hate the 800-pound gorilla. Walmart and Amazon destroy communities and small businesses. Facebook turns us into addicts while putting our personal data at risk. From skeptical politicians like Bernie Sanders who at a 2016 presidential campaign rally said, “If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,” to millennials, only 42 percent of whom support capitalism, belief in big business is at an all-time low. But are big companies inherently evil? If business is so bad, why does it remain so integral to the basic functioning of America? Economist and best-selling author Tyler Cowen says our biggest problem is that we don’t love business enough.
In Big Business, Cowen puts forth an impassioned defense of corporations and their essential role in a balanced, productive, and progressive society. He dismantles common misconceptions and untangles conflicting intuitions. According to a 2016 Gallup survey, only 12 percent of Americans trust big business “quite a lot”, and only six percent trust it “a great deal”. Yet Americans as a group are remarkably willing to trust businesses, whether in the form of buying a new phone on the day of its release or simply showing up to work in the expectation they will be paid. Cowen illuminates the crucial role businesses play in spurring innovation, rewarding talent and hard work, and creating the bounty on which we’ve all come to depend.
More from the same
Narrator
What listeners say about Big Business
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Alan
- 10-01-19
Good book poorly read
I enjoyed the content of this book, but I've rarely heard an Audible title read so poorly. The reader has a pleasing voice, so I can see why he's found work. But his reading style is mechanical, and he misses many nuances in the writing. And in many ways, he sounds like a computer tasked with reading the book, with no feel for the English language. For example, he pronounces almost every "the" as "thee" when a normal English speaker would usually say "thuh," and he pronounces almost every "a" as "ay" when it would usually be "uh." He also doesn't seem to know that "estimate" ends in "mate" when it's a verb and "mutt" when it's a noun. Is English his second language? It's puzzling to me that no director or editor was involved to correct these failings. And I feel bad for the author, who wrote a first-rate book but got a second-rate reading.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Savor
- 06-08-19
Marred, for me, by performance
I'm here to lament one aspect of the performance. It is otherwise competent, but the reader mispronounces two of the most-frequently occurring English words: the definite and indefinite articles, "the" and "a". In their normal, as opposed to emphatic, uses, the pronunciation should be with short vowel sounds: "thuh" and "uh"; the vowel sound is what is called a schwa. Pronunciation with a long vowel sound, as "thee" and "ay [to rhyme with "hay]" is appropriate only for emphasis, as in, "This is *the* store for fresh produce", or "it's *a* book, but not the *best* book" (asterisks here in lieu of italics or boldface). For "the", the long vowel sound may also be used before a word with an initial vowel. But in ordinary usage, the schwa vowel sound is correct, whether you prefer a prescriptivist or descriptivist interpretation of "correct."
To my ear, the pronunciation with the long vowels is like that of an elementary-school child, and is a constant source of irritation in listening to this audiobook.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- James
- 06-21-19
Title does not deliver what is promised
This book is one quick money grab and a huge waste of time. The title may get your attention and may even get you to buy it, but the content in this book just doesn't deliver any valid argument. The title leads one to think it will be an argument in defense of big business but alternatively ends up being a thesis about the wonders of Capitalism and how great small businesses are. It is a generic defense of business in general NOT a defense of big business.
Mr. Cowen conflates criticism of big business with criticism of small business and entrepreneurial activity.
If I were to critique the structural integrity of a particular building within a city because I believed it to have flaws in it's foundation, you wouldn't turn around and argue in defense of the concept of cities or the idea of people living together in harmony. You would not defend the construction industry as a whole. You would however logically turn around and defend that particular building that was being critiqued. If something is wrong in the foundation of a building, you look at that foundation. You question it. You bring in experts and get other opinions.
These days if someone even critiques big businesses, people immediately slide over to a defense of capitalism. Even if there were something wrong with capitalism (which I don't) it's alright to critique it, to examine it, to investigate it and yes even to question it from time to time. That is the point of our free society and democracy.
There is a trend these days especially amongst proponents of big business to rebut criticism of their favorite big business with a defense of capitalism and entrepreneurial endeavor. Big business must be questioned and examined from time to time if we are to address the negative effects of these big businesses even if they "create jobs" albeit minimum or just above minimum wage jobs.
I respect Mr. Cowen as an economist and yet I cannot agree with this shady tactic to sell a quick book. I did some research and watched several of Tyler Cowen's lectures to get a better grasp on his main ideas around economics. He is a solid economist with a flair for contrarianism. He himself admits in many of his videos that he loves to play the contrarian. This book is exactly that. Tyler Cowen playing the contrarian to get your attention with an outlandish title to make a quick buck. The content of the book however does not deliver.
Don’t waste your money or time.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bear
- 12-28-21
Reason to not be a Bernie Bro
Ive never heard an argument made on behalf of large corporations before. I reckon this might be why so many youth are skeptical of capitalism. Tyler still acknowledges and sometimes refutes the flaws. I wish I'd heard this sooner.
-
Overall
- autofahrerfromhell
- 09-12-19
eh
Very thin arguments with predictable examples and few insights. Would not recommend, his other books are way better.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David A. Rowe
- 08-24-19
Good but awful narration
Interesting content but robotic narration. Surprised I stuck it out. Book is a good counterpoint to a lot of popular sentiment though.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Matthew
- 06-25-19
Well worth it
Although I don't agree with everything and done of the premises of his arguments, overall this book is well worth the listen.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Martin Ågerup
- 05-27-19
Tyler Cowen at his best
Great book by a great economist, thinker and polymath arguing that big business is underrated
-
Overall
- Jared Hansen
- 05-12-19
Does what it says on the tin
Right in general and almost all particulars, but feels a little unnecessary. if you're reading books by Tyler Cowen you probably already know most of this anyway so there aren't any surprises. This is itself a demonstration of one of the book's main points (that corporations - or in this case, an individual with a personal brand sufficiently recognizable that he may as well be one) mostly tend to do whatever it is the customer hired them to do.
Five stars for Striking a Blow for Truth And Justice; -1 for being somewhat redundant.
(I still enjoyed it, as one enjoys all cheering for one's own side. And I'll definitely still buy Tyler's next book, proving yet another of the book's points in the process.)