First published in 1899 by American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, "The Theory of the Leisure Class" is a classic and important examination of the economics of the upper classes and the impact that their habits have upon society at the end of the 19th century. In this work, Veblen, influenced by the work of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Adam Smith, contends that the evolutionary development of human society is the basis for our modern...

As the Great War raged, Veblen, a leading thinker of his day, pondered just what it would take to create a peaceful world, and what such a world might look like. Veblen's answer (1917) included a league of peaceful and democratic nations, and the neutralization of Germany as a future military threat.

Published at the beginning of World War I, this 1915 collection brings together thirty years of writings on the social and economic conditions that brought the Germany into global conflict. He considers the ancient origins of the German people, their historic conflict with England, and the economic policy of the imperial state.

The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, is a treatise on economics and a detailed, social critique of conspicuous consumption, as a function of social class and of consumerism, derived from the social stratification of people and the division of labour, which are social institutions of the feudal period (9th–15th c.) that have continued to the modern era.

Veblen asserts that the contemporary

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