A Lexicon of Social Well-Being

At just 125 pages, this Palgrave Pivot volume makes a pointed argument: that words like wealth, poverty, happiness, profit, and cooperation have been quietly narrowed by financial capitalism and need to be reclaimed if economic and civil life is to be genuinely good. Luigino Bruni's approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on economic theory, ethics, and discourse analysis to examine the foundational vocabulary of social life. For its target audience — wellbeing economists and policy scholars — the concise format is a feature, not a limitation. The honest caveat is that this is specialist work with sparse critical coverage and the Palgrave Pivot format, by design, trades depth for brevity. General readers curious about economics and human flourishing will find the ideas stimulating but may wish for more sustained development.