For years the discipline of economic theory has been moving away from the real world in pursuit of formalized axioms and mathematical models that maintained a precarious relationship with reality. Commentators and journalists have tried to fill that void as best they can, but in the absence of a solid economic theory, the media have been prey to the short-sightedness of fashion and the immediate reading of economic trends and events. Consequently, the underlying riddles of economic evolution after World War II have remained largely unclear or explained. Robert Brenner, displaying his skills as an economist and historian, has tried to respond to that challenge. In this superb analysis of the behavior of the world economy from 1950 to the current financial crisis that has ended the neoliberal model of financialized economy of the last three decades - to which he has dedicated a broad chapter written specifically for the Spanish edition - Brenner cartography the turbulent history of the global economy and elucidated the mechanisms of overproduction and intense competition that underlie the long crisis that the economic system has known since the early 1970s. Brenner highlights and explains the systemic factors behind the wage repression, high unemployment and uneven development characteristic of the last 30 years, reaching conclusions of great importance on the future trajectory, which call into question the conventional explanations on the operation of the capitalist economy and indicate its structurally unstable character and prone to crisis.