Shutdown by Adam Tooze review – how Covid shook the world economy

A cosmopolitan analysis of what went wrong and how we can avoid it next time - because there will be a next time

Everyone has someone who made them feel inadequate in lockdown, whether it was a neighbour who grew tomatoes in their window box, one of those Twitter people who learned three languages between March and May, or just a friend who didn't feel the need to get drunk every night. For me, that person was Adam Tooze.

While I was struggling to teach long division to my kids and begging editors for deadline extensions, he was - seemingly effortlessly - being a voice of sanity on social media; writing an improbable number of lengthy articles about how Covid-19 was rewiring the world economy; coherently explaining the long-term consequences on multiple podcasts; and sending a regular email newsletter, which discussed China, the EU or Vasily Grossman with equal felicity. As if that wasn't enough, he was also - it turns out - writing a book.