Anatole Kaletsky is a man whose views carry the heft of one of the great Western thinkers of our day. An economist and journalist, with an impressive CV that includes stints at The Economist and the Financial Times, he is now a famously provocative columnist at The Times.
A slew of titles inspired by the global financial crisis (GFC) have tumbled onto bookshop shelves since that cataclysmic autumn of 2008.
Most of these books are based on business and economic theories. This reviewer has yet to see one thoroughly researched title dedicated to the human cost of the GFC - this is the one the world is waiting for.
In the meantime, we have Capitalism 4.0, which seems to skim over the human cost of economic downturns, but which does an insightful and detailed job of illuminating the history of capitalism.
Kaletsky makes a case for the financial crisis of 2008 being a turning point in the evolution of capitalism, the fourth stage since the 18th century. Capitalism isn't dead, he trumpets - the difficulties of recent years have simply meant it has morphed into a different creature, just as it has done in the past.
The author posits that Capitalism 1.0 - from the cotton fields of the American south to the sweatshops of colonised Shanghai - represented a time when economics and democratic politics were kept separate in the West, right up to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.