From a country with one of the world’s lowest rates of income and social inequality comes a clear-eyed and timeless account that recalls Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In The Anatomy of Inequality, Swedish analyst Per Molander examines the development of social and economic inequity throughout the modern world, its history, and what can be done about it.

By mining cultural history, Molander inventively addresses the obvious questions often avoided—including why the wealthiest countries, such as the United States, have the greatest incidences of inequality.

Mixing anthropology, statistics, references to music and literature, and political science, Molander looks at inequality across various political and ideological systems and presents a persuasive, entirely reasonable case that, as surely as societies can be made unequal, so too can they be made equal.