Kindle Price: $9.99

Save $11.00 (52%)

Promotions apply when you purchase

These promotions will be applied to this item:

Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.

Audiobook Price: $18.80

Save: $11.31 (60%)

eBook features:
  • Highlight, take notes, and search in the book
  • In this edition, page numbers are just like the physical edition
Read with our free app
You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.
Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Buy for others

Give as a gift or purchase for a team or group.
Learn more

Buying and sending eBooks to others

  1. Select quantity
  2. Buy and send eBooks
  3. Recipients can read on any device

These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Amazon book clubs early access
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Amazon book clubs early access

Join or create book clubs

Choose books together

Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Explore Amazon Book Clubs

Follow the author

Helen Thompson
+ Follow
More books from this author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century Kindle Edition

by Helen Thompson (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 275 ratings
See all formats and editions
Getting to grips with the overlapping geopolitical, economic, and political crises faced by Western democratic societies in the 2020s.

The 21st century has brought a powerful tide of geopolitical, economic, and democratic shocks. Their fallout has led central banks to create over $25 trillion of new money, brought about a new age of geopolitical competition, destabilised the Middle East, ruptured the European Union, and exposed old political fault lines in the United States.

Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century is a long history of this present political moment. It recounts three histories - one about geopolitics, one about the world economy, and one about western democracies - and explains how in the years of political disorder prior to the pandemic the disruption in each became one big story. It shows how much of this turbulence originated in problems generated by fossil-fuel energies, and it explains why as the green transition takes place the
long-standing predicaments energy invariably shapes will remain in place.
Read more Read less
Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0198864981
  2. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  3. Publisher
    OUP Oxford
  4. Publication date
    February 24, 2022
  5. Language
    English
  6. File size
    1262 KB
  7. See all details
Next page
Add a debit or credit card to save time when you check out
Convenient and secure with 2 clicks. Add your card

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Thompson's conceptual work is...elaborate...full of revelations." -- Thomas König, Austrian Journal of Political Science

About the Author

Helen Thompson is professor of political economy at Cambridge University. She is the author of Oil and the Western Economic Crisis; China and the Mortgaging of America; and Might, Right, Prosperity and Consent: Representative Democracy and the International Economy. Since 2015, Helen has been a regular contributor to the podcast Talking Politics and has written articles for the London Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Financial Times.

Kitty Kelly is a narrator, voice-over artist, and actress from London, with a degree in drama and theater arts from the University of Birmingham. She also received professional acting training at Drama Studio London. Since graduating from drama school, she has narrated audiobooks for well-known publishers such as HarperCollins, Bolinda, and Scribd, plus independent authors. Her favorite thing about audiobook narration is being able to play the parts that she would never normally get cast as on stage. She loves creating distinctive voices that reflect the characters' personalities and has a good ear for learning new accents. Kitty has a naturally conversational and candid reading style, and likes to establish a sense of familiarity with the listener, so she began her career narrating chick lit, rom-coms, and romance. Thanks to her versatile sound, she now has a wider repertoire, including romantic suspense, historical fiction, mysteries/thrillers, memoirs, and kids books, and would love to try even more genres, particularly self-help books and teen fiction.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09RQ6DYLP
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ OUP Oxford (February 24, 2022)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 24, 2022
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1262 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 383 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0198865015
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 275 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Helen Thompson

Helen Thompson

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
275 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

James A. Fok
5.0 out of 5 stars A thought provoking book…
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2023
Verified Purchase
… that does an admirable job of connecting the dots between energy and financial markets, and the political and geopolitical challenges the world has been facing.

The work is ambitious in scope and the author spared no effort digging into details to support her arguments. The result is a set of novel insights on a number of historical events over the past few decades.

My only (small) criticism is that, in her attempt to explain a number of policy decisions, she perhaps attributes an excess of rationality to the processes. It is easy to rationalise after the fact but in reality practitioners are subject to biases and often have to act with only a small fraction of the available information. And, sadly, far too few of them will have read books like this…
5 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Billjonn
4.0 out of 5 stars Its a text book.
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2022
Verified Purchase
Its a dense, tough read. I kept at it as its got a lot of play-by-play analysis, but it strikes me that stronger editing might have made this a more flowing read. After all, the information being shared is staggering.
9 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Eddie Choo
5.0 out of 5 stars An intricate account of the origins of the chaos in the 2010s-2020s
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2023
Verified Purchase
Appreciated the unflinching focus on the structural tensions arising from various geopolitical relations and issues, which in some ways have always been there, going back to the days of empires.

Also suggests implicitly that we will always be musdling through as interests and circumstances will allow.
Helpful
 Report
R. Gray
3.0 out of 5 stars An important book, but poorly written and a bad narrator
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2022
Verified Purchase
This book contains a lot of very important history, but written in a dense academic style. That style is combined with a narrator who I would rate very poorly against the other 20 narrators I have been exposed to. This is both a tough read and a very difficult listen. If you have the time to closely study the text, it is worth it. If you don't, give this one a pass.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Kindle Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars abonimable audiobook
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2022
Two stars from respect for Helen Thompson, who deserves better and should return the audible advance for a re-d0. Is Kitty Kelly a machine? Her pronunciation in all languages, including English, is stilted or even wrong. Jeune in French becomes June. In English each vowel gets enunciation in the most artificial manner. There is no break between chapters -- the recording rushes on. Very hard to concentrate on Thompson's arguments given this abysmal reading. That said, the structure of the book itself is challenging. Is there an overarching argument or is this a matter of facts, almost arbitrarily selected, that don't compose a whole. I'm writing this with less than an hour left from the audio reading -- a measure of respect for the author though the recording is gag-me-with-a-spoon terrible.
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Mark Myers
1.0 out of 5 stars I can't understand the narrator.
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2022
I should have played the preview. I've been listening to Audible books for years, and this is the first reader whose accent is, for me, impenetrable.
4 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
MotoScro
1.0 out of 5 stars Don’t waste your time on this book
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2023
Didn’t make past 2 pages. Definitely written by a democrat. I would prefer no political slant.
One person found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
NW1
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding and insightful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 30, 2024
Verified Purchase
Very interesting account of recent and 20th century history through the lens of a deep understanding of politics and economics. Quite densely written but not loaded with jargon. Probably best if you have an existing knowledge base of the chronology. Gave me a better understanding of events I'd lived through. Not cheerful but if you want a compelling explanation of where we are today and why then you should read this book. It's been updated to include the Ukraine war.
Report
Raffaele
4.0 out of 5 stars interacting and full of critical perspectives
Reviewed in Italy on March 5, 2023
Verified Purchase
Particolarly appreciated in the sections that relates oil with monetary and political consequences. Holistic view over dynamics let understanding historical facts with different angle. I strongly recommend reading to better understand actual status of things …
Report
Niemann
5.0 out of 5 stars Lange Sätze, keine Frage...
Reviewed in Germany on September 4, 2022
Verified Purchase
... und wenn das Buch nicht so gut wäre 3,5 Sterne.

Aber dieses Buch ist richtig gut.

Man kann vieles über das Buch sagen, z.B. es geht teils hinaus über

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin, welches exzellent ist.

Man kann vieles sagen. Aber ich sage wenig. Anders als Mrs. Thompson ;-)
One person found this helpful
 Report
john brown
3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant content but a slog to read
Reviewed in Australia on February 17, 2023
Verified Purchase
The material covered is brilliant and insightful, but the writing itself is hard work to read through - best tackled by non-academics like me in short bursts rather than extended study - I tried the audiobook version but frankly that was too hard to follow and turned into a bit of a drone - at least with the book versions I can dip and delve into it and read in my own head voice.
Report
Aslan M.
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, though not so well written.
Reviewed in Italy on March 8, 2023
Verified Purchase
Dense history, rich of interesting facts and original analyses. Unfortunately, not a smooth read: perhaps jotted down a tad hastily….?
Report
Report an issue

Does this item contain inappropriate content?
Report
Do you believe that this item violates a copyright?
Report
Does this item contain quality or formatting issues?
Report