About the book: 2019 / Walter Scheidel (sometimes called Walter Scheidel in English) is an Austrian historian, Stanford professor, specialist in the field of economic history and historical demography, author of a powerful historical perspective that makes the connection between violence and levels of inequality. Stable, peaceful times favor economic inequality, and violent shocks reduce the gap between rich and poor. Scheidel names four main reasons for this reduction, comparing them with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse - a symbol of chaos and global catastrophe. These four horsemen are war, revolution, state collapse and large-scale epidemics. All of these factors, except the last one, are associated with limitless violence, and all, without exception, entail endless suffering and millions of victims. It is violence that Scheidel calls “the great equalizer.”».