Adults in the Room, Yanis Varoufakis
Adults in the Room, Yanis Varoufakis
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Adults in the Room
My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment

Author: Yanis Varoufakis

Narrator: Leighton Pugh

Unabridged: 20 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/03/2017


Synopsis

"Leighton Pugh narrates this work as if it were an unsolved mystery...In a voice of nuanced emotion, Pugh creates muted characters to paint a vivid picture of what the author was up against as he tried to save his country." — AudioFile Magazine

A Number One Sunday Times Bestseller transformed into an illuminating, dynamic audiobook.

What happens when you take on the establishment? In Adults in the Room, renowned economist and former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis gives the full, blistering account of his momentous clash with the mightiest economic and political forces on earth.

After being swept into power with the leftwing Syriza party, Varoufakis attempts to re-negotiate Greece’s relationship with the EU—and sparks a spectacular battle with global implications. Varoufakis’s new position sends him ricocheting between mass demonstrations in Athens, closed-door negotiations in drab EU and IMF offices, and furtive meetings with power-brokers in Washington, DC. He consults and quarrels with Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Christine Legarde, the economists Larry Summers and Jeffrey Sachs, and others, as he struggles to relieve Greece’s debt crisis without resorting to punishing austerity measures. But, despite the mass support of the Greek people and the simple logic of Varoufakis’s arguments, he succeeds only in provoking the fury of Europe’s elite.

Varoufakis’s unvarnished memoir is an urgent warning that the economic policies once embraced by the EU and the White House have failed—and spawned authoritarianism, populist revolt, and instability throughout the Western world.

Adults in the Room is an extraordinary tale of brinkmanship, hypocrisy, collusion, and betrayal that will shake the global establishment to its foundations.

A must-listen for anyone interested in current events and the delicate web of global economics.

About Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the co-founder of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. He is the author of And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and The Global Minotaur. After many years teaching in the United States, Britain, and Australia, he is currently professor of economics at the University of Athens.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kevin on August 29, 2022

Behind the closed doors of a Financial Crisis… Highlights: --I’ve read Varoufakis’ general public books numerous times; this one started lowest in my priorities as I assumed general readers would already flock to it for its first-person narrative, whereas I focus on structural analysis of society’s ab......more

Goodreads review by Judith on July 05, 2020

A work for the ages! "Adults in the Room" masterfully oscillates between the thrilling and the lyrical, the very personal and the universal, giving us a unique glimpse behind the high walls of power. This book will be uncomfortable or even dangerous for many current politicians, from Europe's govern......more

Goodreads review by Pedro on June 20, 2017

The Guardian review is right, it is indeed one of greatest political memoirs of all time; also: a towering achievement, a magnificent intellectual endeavour, and one of the best and most important books I ever had the privilege and pleasure of reading. It is 2 in the bloody morning and I couldn't sto......more

Goodreads review by Aris on September 09, 2019

I have mixed feelings about this book. Starting with style: Varoufakis's prose tends to be overly dramatic and pretentious at times, but it's also undeniably engaging, and his book reads like a thriller. Regarding substance: the book is a fascinating account of Greece's negotiation with the IMF, the......more

Goodreads review by Adam on May 11, 2017

Thoroughly engrossing. Varoufakis tells the story of his attempt to solve the eurocrisis using the lens of an authentic ancient Greek or Shakespearean tragedy in which characters, neither good nor bad, are overtaken by the unintended consequences of their conception of what they ought to do. I suspe......more


Quotes

"Leighton Pugh narrates this work as if it were an unsolved mystery...Pugh turns what might have been a dry collection of facts into a morality tale with heroes and villains. In a voice of nuanced emotion, Pugh creates muted characters to paint a vivid picture of what the author was up against as he tried to save his country. " -AudioFile

"Varoufakis has written one of the greatest political memoirs of all time . . . it is the inside story of high politics told by an outsider . . . Varoufakis gives one of the most accurate and detailed descriptions of modern power ever written." —Paul Mason, The Guardian

"A stylish memoir . . . deeply personal and very well written, with an impressive array of literary allusions . . . [Varoufakis] outlines a cogent case against the austerity heaped on Greece." —Kevin Featherstone, Financial Times

"Riveting . . . An extraordinary account of low cunning at the heart of Greece's 2015 financial bailout . . . [Varoufakis is] a motorcycling, leather jacketed former academic and self-styled rebel who took pleasure in winding up the besuited political class . . . An admirably believable depiction of a Greek and European tragedy." —John Kampfner, The Guardian

"One of my few heroes. As long as people like Varoufakis are around, there still is hope." —Slavoj Žižek

"A very, very clever person, and in the basic argument about what's been going on in Europe I think he's right." —Martin Wolf

"An outstanding economist and political analyst." —Noam Chomsky

"The most interesting man in the world." Business Insider

"The Thucydides of our time." —Jeffrey Sachs