Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that it never dies peacefully.is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world. The “Four Horsemen” of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future. An essential contribution to the debate about inequality,provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent—and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon.

Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. The author or editor of seventeen previous books, he has published widely on premodern social and economic history, demography, and comparative history. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

“A superb book.”—Steven Pinker, Times Literary Supplement

“Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler is a smartly argued book…. For anybody who has ever debated issues related to inequality and their broader meaning, this book provides more than just a powerful thought experiment.”—Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times

“Mr Scheidel’s evidence is so persuasive that readers will find themselves cheering on the Black Death as a boost to median wages.”—Janan Ganesh, Financial Times

“Sweeping and provocative.”—New Yorker

“A readable and quirky history of economic inequality from the great apes to the modern day…. It is well worth the read. It is, in a word, gripping.”—Victoria Bateman, Times Higher Education

“The Great Leveler should set off loud alarm bells…. The range of evidence is breathtaking.”—Timur Kuran, Foreign Affairs