Mr. Piketty seems to be maintaining a most un-rock-star-like modesty, brushing away comparisons to Tocqueville and Marx with an embarrassed grimace and a Gallic puff of the lips.“It makes very little sense: How can you compare?” he said on Thursday between gulps of yogurt during a break in his packed schedule — before going on to list the 19th-century data sets that Marx neglected to draw on in “Das Kapital,” his 1867 magnum opus.“If Marx had looked at them, it would have made him think a bit more,” he said.

Thomas Piketty Tours U.S. for His New Book - NYTimes.com Saturday, April 19, 2014 @ 5:04pm