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Loading... A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton…by Gregory ClarkSeries: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World (2007)
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. One of the great quotes: One of the more puzzling questions about the Industrial Revolution is why it occurred in Europe, and not in China, Japan or India. The answer is that the Industrial Revolution in Europe was an accident of history, largely the result of European social customs   GEPPSTER53 | Jul 16, 2009 |  Fantastic book. It has a nice density to it, similar to the directly referenced Guns Germs and Steel. The book has helped to renew my pride in the prosperity of the United States, and the virtues which make that prosperity possible (which I thought I'd lost permanently after reading The Shock Doctrine). I'm only halfway through, but the thesis appears to be this: Contrary to popular economic wisdom (in the author's opinion, I'm no expert here), strong institutions alone are not sufficient for the development of a modern, healthy, free-market economy. Attitudes towards work and literacy/numeracy rates for example are critical. Attitudes towards work are especially interesting because of the fact that they are a cultural attribute which can't be institutionalized overnight, despite the best efforts of brilliant economists like Milton Friedman and Jeffrey Sachs. The book is thus interesting from an international development and progressive policy-making perspective, because it suggests that much of our efforts to help with modernization of the third-world have been severely misguided. This is one of those books that I look forward to reading every day. Clark is a wonderful writer. His prose is even humorous and (very) occasionally poetic, but always very well organized and packed with information. There is even a sprinkling of basic economics math and theory which is great. (  )1  l4stewar | Feb 21, 2009 | Putting the dismal back in the dismal sciences might be a bit harsh to say about this book. However, a book about overpopulation caused by better living conditions and health is really about as depressing as the field gets. The book is well-written and as engaging as it can be, and I did learn quite a bit reading this book. However, if your sole foray into economics is Freakonomics, you might want another book. (  )1 kaelirenee | Nov 20, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2008 January 4 |
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Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations.
Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education.
The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations.
A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:11 -0400)
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