Rating: 
Summary: DISAPPOINTED
Review: Inaccurate historical claims + bad political economy + author way out of his league (is he a mutual fund guy?)I have never read William Bernstein before and thought he was Peter Bernstein from the publicity. My bad. Peter Bernstein's Capital Ideas + Against The Gods covers all the themes. There is much ado about nothing here. Book is pedestrian and populist. Not enough to compensate for kitschy content. Skip this one and try WW Rostow's World Economy for serious history, or Kindleberger's History of Western Europe for accuracy or Michel Beaud's Capitalism for reasons why the West advanced. Ludwig Von Mises Theory And History: An Interpretation Of Social And Economic Evolution rocks.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Historical Read
Review: Normally, I read histories, but not economic books. This one first caught my attention with its title and then its cover. From the very beginning I was seduced by the clarity of the prose and the unique perspective this book offers on our past development and future prospects. Bernstein explains his theories and illustrates them with case studies of Holland, England, Spain, France, and Japan, followed by the Ottoman Empire and an overview of Latin America. Essentially this book explains why we, the United States and other English speaking countries, have wealth and so many other countries do not. Not content to rest there, Bernstein discusses if this wealth makes us happy and its relationship to democracy. While this is much to absorb, the writing style flows smoothly and the historical sweep is dazzling.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes 2-3 insights are enough
Review: Previous reviewers have listed multiple pluses and minuses. I generally agree. However, if I can read a book like this and come away with even one idea that helps me understand how my corner of the world operates (or could operate better), I feel it is money well spent. For me, Mr. Berstein's lucid argument that civil rights proceed from property rights was compelling. Likewise, toward the end of the book, his analysis of the dangers of growing income disparities finally gave substance to an intuitive suspicion. Groping with affluence has not been pretty for the US particularly, and this book may help us handle this fortunate problem more effectively.
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Summary: Worth the read of developmental economics
Review: Read this book and you have about 3/4 the content for a developmental economics class. However there is no mention of welfare economics which is about 1/4 the remaining content of a development economics class. There is also no mention of "micro-lending"-lending small amounts of money to poor third-world people, which have remarkable results for lifting poor third world people above poverty. I'm not about to disclose the thesis of this book because only the individual can decide is a book is efficacious. With that said, my opinion is that this book is a good worthwhile read. While I am fairly well read in economics and I learned a few things reading "Birth of Plenty". The mind set of 18th century Europe makes one wonder what were those royals thinking? They were way off their thinking about how to grow the wealth of their nations. Also the there is now new data that William Berstein shares with us with new insight.
The book is well written, the structure of the book is clear, the author has a point and it is clear.
Rating:
Summary: Say What?
Review: The previous reviewer and I seem not to have read the same book. Nowhere does Bernstein state that all four factors had their origins around 1820-his history of property rights, which dates back to prehistoric times, is very simply the best that I have read anywhere. Nor do I know of any economic authority who doubts that the improvements in property rights in Northern Europe were a major cause of its prosperity, not the other way around. The reviewer, who touts his historical expertise, also seems unaware that Da Gama's most celebrated voyage of discovery took place during the fifteenth century, not the sixteenth. Both the general reader, as well as historians and economists, will find Bernstein's four-factor paradigm invaluable in understanding how the world arrived in its present state. His prose is lively, and given the weight of the subject, goes down like fine claret. You don't even have to take my word for it-according to the April 5 edition of Publishers Weekly, "Packed with information and ideas, Bernstein's book is an authoritative economic history, accessible and thoroughly entertaining."
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Summary: What the other Bernstein says
Review: The previous reviewer praises Peter Bernstein (a favorite of mine too, and not related to William Bernstein); here's what Peter Bernstein says about this new book (at his web site): "Bill Bernstein's erudite history of the causes and consequences of growth grasps the main issues and keeps them up front all the way through. This book is a great magnifying glass for studying the complex world of today." I agree- I think The Birth of Plenty is one of the most important books of the year, and I recommend it highly to anyone trying to understand our time.
Rating: 
Summary: Explaining everything, or at least trying to
Review: There really is quite a bit good about this book. For one thing, it is very readable. Economic history is not usually regarded as a subject for a real page-turner, but Bernstein manages to come close. For another thing, his economics is solid. He is, as one would expect of a working investment advisor, a free market economist, but he isn't an ideologue. He recognizes that there is more to life than the free market. So he can point out, p. 270, that under Meiji Japan the landlord-tenant system was economically efficient yet a social disaster. And he writes, p. 339, that "History teaches that significant wealth inequality is not as benign as a moderately uncomfortable tax burden is." One of those three stars is for that sentence alone.
So why only three stars? Because economic history needs both good economics and good history: Bernstein's history is very bad indeed.
The first thing that jumps out is how Bernstein relies on popular histories. When he discusses the Middle Ages, for example, he repeatedly cites Barbara Tuchman's _A Distant Mirror_. That is a very good popular history of 14th century northern France. She used scholarly sources, which in turn used original period sources. But this is another way of saying that what we get from Bernstein is three steps removed from concrete facts to ever vaguer generalization, rather like repeatedly photocopying a document. Statements about one place and time get turned into statements about Europe in the Middle Ages. When you deal in vague generalizations you can make the history fit any desired mold. Anyone claiming to have a brilliant historical insight should at least read actual historians.
On a more concrete level, there are countless howlers: We have the Catholic Inquisition in Edinburgh over a century after the Scottish Reformation. We have a credulous retelling of the story of Galileo dropping weights off the leaning tower of Pisa. We are told that the "conventional military wisdom" is that an American defeat at the Battle of Midway might have forced the U.S. to sue for peace. Who holds this conventional wisdom? Not any military historian who doesn't want to get laughed out of the room. One is left with the feeling that he learned this from watching bad documentaries on the History Channel. And so on, and so on, and so on. The book is full of these.
Playing a game of 'gotcha!' is beside the point if the book holds together despite the occasional error. Unfortunately, it does not. The thesis breathlessly reported in the promotional material is that the economic revolution of England circa 1820 was the result of four factors coming together: property rights, scientific rationalism, capital markets, and modern transportation and communication. This actually is only the subject of less than half the book. Much of the rest is devoted to the proposition that these same four factors are necessary and sufficient for other nations to reproduce the revolutionary growth. It really isn't obvious or clear that the basic factors needed to invent a phenomenon are the same as those needed to duplicate it. The assumption, apparently unexamined, results in an unhappy combination, with yet more tucking and folding and stretching needed.
Consider the fourth factor, modern transportation and communications. In 1820 this meant railroads and telegraphs. Bernstein correctly shows how their invention resulted from modern science and their exploitation was made possible through property rights and capitalization. In other words, railroads and telegraphs resulted from the other three factors. But this means that transportation and communications aren't a fundamental factor at all, but derive from other, more basic factors: combine the three fundamental factors, stir, let the pot simmer for a couple of centuries, and you have your fourth factor. It doesn't make sense to treat it as fundamental when considering 1820 England. On the other hand, other nations have no need to re-invent the railroad. So if you look at how other nations can reproduce the effect, it makes sense to treat transportation and communications as a basic necessity.
That's a pretty abstract complaint. Even it does involve a bit of folding and tucking, who cares so long as the model works? But it doesn't. Bernstein completely fails to explain how Germany underwent similar growth in the 1890s. On page 157 he notes the tiny German capital market in 1873, and on page 370 he mentions that 1870 to 1913 Germany had the second-fastest growth in the world. How can this be? This is not merely nitpicking. If Germany lacked any of the purportedly necessary factors, yet achieved rapid growth without them, the thesis is disproved. I honestly don't know if Bernstein didn't notice the problem, ducked the issue, or has an explanation but left it out to keep his page count down.
The whole thing smacks of a pet idea which attempts to neatly tie everything together, but fails. Were this the first draft of a doctoral thesis it would, one trusts, be followed by extensive revision. But in the hands of an established writer it gets published, and he being a capable writer, he writes convincingly.
So why do I give it as many as three stars? For the reasons I gave in my first paragraph, I think this is a suitable book for some readers. Someone who wants a painless introduction to both history and economics will come out knowing more than when he went in, and reading this book might lead to reading better books. But for my money I think that even after fifteen years Paul Kennedy's _The Rise and the Decline of the Great Powers_ holds up well and covers a lot of the same ground better.
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Summary: The Roots of Prosperity
Review: This book explores the cultural and historical factors that converged during the early 1800s to ignite today's economic boom. The author cites four ingredients: Property rights, scientific rationalism, capital markets and improvements in transportation and communication. He identifies when and how, beginning in the 1820s, each played an accelerating role in our growth. Bernstein's examination of the role these effects had on people's personal lives adds to this book's value. By identifying the causes of our prosperity, Bernstein provides the reader with a personal platform to assess where we are currently headed. Surprisingly, the author argues progress has been slowing since 1850. The average resident of the Western world alive in 1950 would have no trouble accepting the technology of the year 2000. This was not the case in 1800. The horse was the fastest moving object then. By 1837, the telegraph's instant communication changed the world forever.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful and delightful
Review: Very well written, interesting and informative. Some of the negative reviewers point out that most of the information contained is available elsewhere, but that is precisely why the book is delightful. I didn't have to read a dozen elsewheres! Dr. Bernstein did it for me, and presented it in a well organized and well written narative.
Rating:
Summary: What made Prosperity Happen
Review: We live in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. We live in a world of change, indeed an increasing rate of change, that couldn't have been imagined a couple of centuries ago. It of course began in England, but why? Why England? Why at that time? Dr. Bernstein - you can see more of his thinking at his website -- www.efficientfrontier.com/ -- says that there are four conditions necessary for this kind of development/growth: Property Rights (where advances are not confiscated by the government), Scientific Rationalism (remember Galileo put under house arrest for the absurd belief that the Earth goes around the Sun), Capital Markets (with some honesty), and a working Transportation/Communication system (so you can sell what you make). He brings up some very interesting points, on the relationship between culture and religion. It has been obvious that the differences between Christian Europe and the impoverished Muslin world are immense. His view is that this is not because of the religion, but of the basic underlying culture. Well worth your time.
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