Asterisk because, although rentier capitalism is everywhere, the author (successfully, in my view) argues that it's been taken much further in the UK than anywhere else, and so it's particularly essential, and enraging, for anyone with a link to the UK.

Christophers lays out the essentials of rent and rentiers, and then devotes a chapter to each of the main instances in the UK economy. This includes land rents, though relatively briefly, but more importantly all the monopoly and near-monopoly businesses to which we're exposed, both the natural monopolies resulting from Thatcher-era privatisations, and the owners of other forms of monopoly, such as IP rights or the digital giants.

Perhaps the most enraging lesson to take away from the book is not just that, basically, the UK has been wrecked by neoliberalism, but that the 'promise' of neoliberalism to be all about unleashing innovation and competition actually only applies to workers. That is, while workers are forced to become more competitive through increased precarity, big companies have become less and less innovative because they can make money simply through 'sweating' their assets.

About the only downside to the book is that I now feel I really ought to get around to reading Piketty and that... feels like a lot.