Adults In The Room

After the left-wing Syriza party swept to power in Greece, economist Yanis Varoufakis became finance minister and tried to renegotiate the country's relationship with the European Union. His memoir of the 2015 bailout fight moves between mass demonstrations in Athens, closed-door talks in EU and IMF offices and private meetings with power brokers in Washington. He consults and quarrels with Christine Lagarde, Emmanuel Macron, Barack Obama, Jeffrey Sachs, Larry Summers and others while looking for a way out of Greece's debt crisis that avoids punishing austerity. In his view, the economic policies the EU and the White House once embraced have failed, feeding authoritarianism and populist revolt across the West. Costa-Gavras adapted it into a 2019 film.

Gabriel Coarna, founder of Readable, said he read it after seeing Varoufakis give a talk.