Economics & Finance

How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations

    Narrator
  • Richard Lyddon

Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award

This audiobook narrated by Richard Lyddon spans 1,000 years of global history to show why technological and economic progress is often followed by stagnation and even collapse



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Published:
Sep 16, 2025
2025
Runtime:
17 hours 54 minutes
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Video provided by FT Live.

In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world鈥檚 largest, most advanced economies鈥攖he United States and China鈥攈ave fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.

By examining key historical moments鈥攆rom the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI鈥擣rey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past鈥攕uch as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain鈥攗ltimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in history: while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term鈥攆indings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.

Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.

Ideas Podcast: How Progress Ends


Awards and Recognition

  • Winner of the PROSE Award in Economics, Association of American Publishers
  • A Foreign Policy Best 快色直播 of the Summer
  • Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award
  • A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
  • A Five 快色直播 Best Book of the Year
  • A Bloomberg Best Book of the Year
  • One of OODALoop's Top 10 Technology, Security, and Business 快色直播 of 2025
  • Longlisted for the Non-Obvious Book Awards
  • Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, University of Toronto