In his 1835 novel Le Pere Goriot (“Father Goriot”), author Honore de Balzac creates the shady character Vautrin, who advises young, penniless noble Eugene de Rastignac to give up his hopes of escaping his poverty by studying law in Paris. Instead, he advises that he marry an heiress because he could not, no matter how successful he was as a lawyer, earn enough to escape his poverty at that time in France.

Thomas Piketty, a professor at the Paris School of Economics, recites that lesson, the economic calculations of Jane Austen’s characters in Sense and Sensibility, the philosophies of Karl Marx in Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto  -- among many, many other sources -- in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Piketty researched his book for 15 years, and the book reads more like an economics textbook or a doctoral dissertation. The prose could be the professor’s own technical, wordy writing style or a clunky translation from the French. The book’s 685 pages are composed of a 40-page introduction; 91 pages of notes; pages detailing the book’s contents (including a list of graphs that appear on what it seems to be every page); and an index.

So expect a challenging read and not your typical summer beach-reading fare.

However, the book is probably worth the effort. It has stimulated much debate, which Piketty had hoped for. It remains a bestseller since its release on March 10.

The Root Of All Evil?

For the first 470 pages, Piketty outlines the history of capital, its uses, misuses and the several times wealth was overly concentrated among the wealthy. Piketty considers this dangerous to the economies of nations and the world. The several times in history when the extremely wealthy controlled most of the wealth were corrected either by world wars, revolutions and a Great Depression.

Piketty also blames the unequal distribution of wealth as a contributing factor in the Great Recession and its lackluster recovery.

Piketty does gives an indirect plug to financial advisors, saying that with their help, the wealthy doubled their returns on investment to 6 percent to 7 percent from the 2 to 3 percent return people received who do not use a financial advisor.

Tax And Spend?

The real controversies surrounding the book stem from what he recommends doing about the unequal distribution of wealth, which include a global tax on capital; transparent global banking regulations (to see where the uber-wealthy have hidden their money to tax it uniformly so wealth cannot flee from one country to another); a hefty tax on bonuses and inheritance (“death taxes” in the U.S.); strict regulation of banking; and, an almost-confiscatory tax (not quite as high as the 80 percent to 90 percent tax on the wealthy the U.S. has imposed during parts of the 20th century) on people whose wealth comes solely from investments.

He advocates spending on education, infrastructure, health and saving the world from climate change.

Another of Piketty’s recommendations is an increase in the minimum wage. In an interesting note of historical irony, Piketty notes in the U.S. low-wage workers got the biggest bang for their buck in 1969 when the minimum wage was set at $1.60. In 2013 dollars, $1.60 equals $10.10 or what some members of Congress are advocating for the minimum wage.

There are other recommendations for taxes; how to deal with national debt (including the mess in Europe); and, how to share the wealth with the poor.

The book is worth the effort. You might want to skip directly to Part Four ("Regulating Capital in the Twenty-First Century") and then return to the first three parts where he examines the economic systems of the “Ancien Regime” (France: from the 15th century to the French Revolution); Britain in Jane Austen’s time; “La Belle Epoch” (France: 1871 to the start of World War I); and “The Shocks” to the world economy (World War 1 and II, the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression).

Also noteworthy in the book are his economic histories of Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Japan, China and other countries. And in this earlier part of the book is where he presents the history of unequal distribution of wealth.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; March 10; 685 pages.

William L. Haacker is an award-winning journalist and editor who has worked for various New Jersey newspapers, including Gannett New Jersey.