Winners Take It All

Anand Giridharadas, a former New York Times columnist, contends that the global elite's campaigns to change the world protect the status quo and hide their own role in the problems they say they are solving. The argument grew out of a speech he gave at the Aspen Institute describing an Aspen Consensus: winners should be pushed to do more good but never told to do less harm. He examines how the wealthy recast themselves as saviors of the poor and reward thought leaders who define change in winner-friendly terms, and he looks at forums such as the Clinton Global Initiative and the World Economic Forum. It was his first book to reach the New York Times best seller list.

Bill Gates endorsed it, admiring Giridharadas's fresh perspective on complex social problems. Bryan Stevenson praised it as an important book that brings clarity to a confusing era.