Rating: 
Summary: Excellent text tying together Economics and World History
Review: David Landes is an enjoyable story teller and writes in a very readable manner. He explains, with amply researched proofs, why various countries have developed the way they have. I learned alot about world history as well as economics and how geography, culture and government have all interacted in the world to explain the economic history of the world, why some countries are rich and others are poor.
Rating:
Summary: This book is absolutely brilliant and thought provoking.
Review: I read this book after reading Paul Johnson's "History of the American People" and I wish I had read this book as a prelude. The two books absolutely complement each other. David Landes writes in a very clear easy to understand manner. It is a very enlightening explanation of how the World's economys evolved through history. It is done in such a manner in which I have never had it explained to me by any previous professors or teachers. If more teachers could teach Economics, Social History and World History like this more students would be excited about these subjects. Every student or world citizen should read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Things are easily explained in hindsight
Review: I have just one thing to say about all literary works that try to explain away why nations are in the state they are based on the climate, geography, race, etc. It is easy to explain why things turned out the way they did *after the fact*. For all arguments that Prof. Landes has given in support of why certain countries have not done well, there could be an equal number of arguments why they should have done well.Secondly, he takes only the most recent 500-700 years in account for his supporting data. There are countries whose history dates back atleast 3-4000 years prior to that, who have already seen more than a few economic ups and downs during the span of these several thousand years. To say that because of their climate, geography or behaviour they have *never* done well, or will *never* do well is an insult to the human spirit. In my mind any nation's *current* wealth and success depends on the *current* political environment, its law and order situation, freedom of enterprise, and on the safety of its resources from outside invasion. I am sorry but I for one am a great believer in the power of the human spirit over all external factors.
Rating:
Summary: Best History of Everything possible within current biases
Review: Reviewed by Steve Sailer Published in National Review, 4/6/98 (this is my final draft, so it differs slightly from the version published in NR) Steve Sailer is a businessman and writer. Human uniformity is the bedrock assumption of polite discourse today. Yet, when it comes to making money, humanity may now be further from equality of results than ever before. According to David S. Landes, professor emeritus of both economics and history at Harvard, just 250 years ago the average standard of living in the wealthiest nation on Earth, Great Britain, was only about five times higher than in the poorest nation. Today, the ratio between, say, Switzerland and Mozambique is something like 400 to one. What happened? The end of the millennium seems to be conjuring up ultra-ambitious History of Everything tomes. Of these, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations may turn out to be the most sensible and enjoyable. It is not, however, a page-turner. Landes describes not just the economic history, but the technological, political, military, religious, cultural, and geographic status, of dozens of countries across almost 1,000 years. Combined with his frequent halts to pummel other authors' bad ideas, he can't generate much narrative momentum. Instead, it's a wonderful page-flipper. Landes' gruff, Walter Matthauish persona, love of argument, and inexhaustible supply of colorful examples makes the book perfect for dipping into at random. Landes draws upon contemporary scholarship's vast accumulation of detail, while contemptuously dismissing the "Europhobia" and other blinders that keep so many academics from recognizing the main patterns in their data. (As George Orwell noted, "To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle.") Landes denounces mainstream academia's dogma of absolute cultural relativism as "an attack on knowledge," because "distinctions are the stuff of understanding." Instead, he finds that the 18th Ce! ntury Scottish Enlightenment, exemplified by Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, outlined a more accurate checklist for predicting what makes winners: "markets, markets, markets;" the security of private property; patriotism in defense of the homeland; careers open to talents; trust extending beyond the family; rationalism, skepticism, and argument; curiosity about other cultures; and an intense work ethic, to name a few. Like Thomas Sowell, Landes is unusual among modern economists in preferring words to equations. Therefore, he doesn't underestimate the hard-to-quantify but cumulatively huge impact of cultural differences. For example, he notes that everybody "comments on the quality of the [East Asian] workforce, but equally takes it somehow for granted." Digging deeper, Landes attributes the supremacy of the Japanese and other East Asians in micro-assembly in part to the "exceptional manual dexterity that comes with eating with chopsticks." Also like Sowell, he tries to avoid biological explanations for cultural disparities by emphasizing "nature's inequalities" in geography and weather: e.g., cold climates encourage hard work, warm climates leisure. (Granted, this isn't exactly news to Club Med's management, but for a Harvard professor, these are brave words, indeed.) Still, Landes' fear of understanding biological distinctions causes his most glaring mistake: his insistence that "gender equality" is crucial to economic development. he insists "gender equality" is a necessity for growth (rather than a pleasant side effect). Males can't "think themselves superior by biology, without dulling [their] ambition." Sounds plausible, but it wasn't true in Manchester in 1770, in Pittsburgh in 1870, or in Nagoya in 1970. And it's definitely not true in the Silicon Valley in 1998, where female executives are so rare that they have formed a support group named "Babes in Boyland." Greater sex equality is far less oft! en a necessity for economic growth than a pleasant side effect of it. Ironically, Landes here forgets the famous lesson on p. 1 of Adam Smith's book: the division of labor is the prime creator of wealth. And the oldest division of labor is by sex, as in "hunter-gatherer tribe." Today, sexual specialization keeps spontaneously re-emerging in new industries like software and drug dealing, revealing its genetic roots. But biological differences extend beyond sex to race. For example, Landes doesn't bother to ask: why were East Asians able and inclined to adopt chopsticks in the first place? Could it be because they already tended to have small, nimble fingers? He claims that stressing the impact of geographical differences is the anti-racist alternative to admitting the importance of human biodiversity, but that's a shallow dichotomy. The more powerful the environmental diversity, the more natural selection would adapt people to local conditions. Interestingly, many of the most striking racial differences can be thought of as resembling faint sex differences. For example, contrast the triumph of Japanese manufacturing with Japan's near-total failure in the brutally competitive global market for celebrities. (A recent survey revealed that Americans believe the most famous living Japanese person is Bruce Lee, a dead Chinese guy.) It's the mirror image of African-Americans' undistinguished technological achievements versus their outstanding performance in producing media personalities. Why? Japanese talents extend far beyond chopstick-handling to a set of extremely masculine intellectual skills. Tests show they tend to excel at objective abilities like mathematics and mentally manipulating 3-d objects through "single-tasking" (focusing deeply upon a one impersonal logical problem). Blacks, on the other hand, are often better at typically feminine, more subjective cerebral skills like verbalization, emotional intuition and expression, sense of rhythm, sense of sty! le, improvisation, situational awareness, and mental multi-tasking. Michael Jordan's brain, for instance, enables him to anticipate his opponent's every move while simultaneously demoralizing his foe with nonstop trash-talking. (Try it sometime. It's not easy.) Next, think about physical and emotional/personality traits. Here the races are arrayed in the opposite order. Blacks tend to display more of typically male qualities like muscularity, aggressiveness, self-esteem, need for dominance, and impulsiveness. In contrast, the Japanese economy benefits from a male workforce endowed with more typically feminine virtues like small fingers and fine motor skills, cooperativeness, humility and anxiety, loyalty, long-term orientation, diligence, and carefulness. Combined with their first-rate masculine mental skills, these make Japanese companies powerhouses at exporting superbly engineered machinery. Compared to Japanese organizations, black communities tend to be physically and psychologically masculine, sometimes to the point of disorderliness. Yet a relatively high percentage of individual black men achieve fame by possessing charismatically masculine looks and personalities, without the nerdishness that Dilbert-style male intellectual skills often induce. Like astronomer Tycho Brahe's attempt at a compromise between the theories of Ptolemy and Copernicus, Landes's notion that geography influences culture but not genes may someday be seen as a waystation between the 20th Century social scientist's flat-earthish insistence that nothing affects culture except culture, and the 21st Century's exploration of the fascinating interactions among environment, genes, and culture. * * *
Rating:
Summary: Mandarin style conveys robust account of economic disparity
Review: The topic of economic disparity attracts more heat than light, with authors often doing less to offer insight than to saddle up hobby-horses reflecting the politics of the day. Landes steers clear of all this, possibly stepping on a few toes in his no-nonsense assertion that material wellbeing is the definitive indicator of social success; and that democratic capitalism on the American model is the benchmark of success by these standards. His mandarin style combines with a robust cast of mind to rebut explicitly (and to my mind tellingly) such tempting notions as global exploitation (our country is poor because yours is rich), or cultural equivalence (our ways are just as good as yours in our own way, could you but recognise it). This is all to the good, as is the general thrust of Landes' book, that we should look to culture for an explanation of the defining feature of the modern world: the technical and economic triumph in the modern era of Western Europe over such apparently promising rivals as China. Such an account points to an explanation (if not necessarily to policy prescriptions) for such troublesome matters as the greater success of East Asian than South Asian catch-up, or the disappointments of the Middle East, post-colonial Latin America and Africa. Less satisfactory are a few side-swipes early on in the book at "geographical" explanations, where Landes rather lets himself down in his attempt to undermine them with the news that Harvard disbanded its geography school fifty years ago. This is no doubt true but irrelevant to the merit of the arguments. In the event, Landes need not be so sniffy, in that his arguments address the last 5-700 years, whereas the geographers (if I have properly understood the matter) look to the last 40,000. In effect, there is no contradiction, indeed a synthesis seems compelling. See "Guns, Germs and Steel", Jared Diamond, W W Norton, 1997.
Rating: 
Summary: A Point the Author Missed!
Review: As someone who has lived in a rich and poor country, and has lots of friends from all over the world, I'd like to share a personal observation that was missed in the book. People from poor countries are just as hard-working and honest, often more than the avarage American. Their culture is full of proverbs and tales about the value of hard work. However, there is one major difference in the mentality that imo has helped the people from the rich countries - SELFISHNESS. I don't mean this in the derogatory sense. I think, in this case the Me First mentality has proven very helpful in building and maintaing the wealth. For example, people in poor countries have strong family ties, not just in the immediate family but with their grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. If someone from the family looses a job, his family helps him out. When somebody needs a babysitter, they don't look for a daycare, they call somebody in the family. The same thing if you need a ride to the airport, you're moving, building a room addition, and so on. The mind set is "a favor for a favor," rather than "a service for a payment." Close friends are also treated as a part of the family, both in good times and bad. People are very open with each other, very giving, and prefer spending time in a large company, rather than the privacy (and solitude) of their home. All this is certainly very nice, but applied on a large scale seems to work against the people. Being so close to family and friends may hold back a person set to build a business. The deeply rooted need to share conflicts with the demands of doing a business Western style. The attitude of the society towards those who disregard their families is very harsh. Generally, the people are raised with the belief that it's better to be poor in a loving family, than rich and alone while in America it's the other way around, at least in reality (I don't count the wishful thinking of religious and other organizations because it's just that - wishful t! hinking, and not reality). Certainly, lots of people in America do unselfish things like volunteering and giving to charities, but it's different. You can stop doing the volunteer/charity work any time, but you can't cease being a part of your family. See the difference? The family ties you up for a life. I think the book would have been far more satisfying had David S. Landes looked deeper into the souls of the people in the countries he wrote about.
Rating:
Summary: an interesting failure
Review: The Wealth & Poverty of Nations is David Landes attempt to answer the question of what has caused some countries to advance economically while others have been left behind and mired in poverty. While Dr. Landes makes a worthy effort the arguments that he advances ultimately come up short. The central argument advanced in the book is that it is a country's culture (loosely defined) which is the determining factor in whether or not a country advances economically and scientifically. If Dr. Landes wanted to show that culture and economic development are intertwined he needn't have written this book - that fact should be obvious to anyone who is at all observant of the world around them. The real question, which is never addressed in the book, is which is the cart and which is the horse. Were what Landes considers to be the virtues of Northern European culture - openness to new ideas, industriousness, and scientific curiosity - really the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution or were they the result of economic changes that had been set in motion by other historical forces? The economic history of the United States clearly shows that this book may indeed have the cart before the horse. The northern and southern United States shared the same language, religion, and culture. Yet during the 19th century the North industrialized to the point that is was the equal of any industrialized nation in the world while the South remained a backward agricultural region. If culture is the determining factor, why the difference? Again if everything is so dependent on culture why has Britain become such a laggard? Did the culture which presumably propelled Britain to its status as the most advanced nation in the world in the 18th and 19th centuries somehow mutate into a different type of culture which has now reduced Britain to an also ran? Clearly, Dr. Landes's thesis needs some work. The book also suffers from several lapses in intellectual rigor that one simply wouldn't expect from someone of the author's stature. The correlation that Landes makes between Asian countries use of chopsticks and their successful microelectronics industries is bizarre to say the least. His statement in another part of the book that "In general, the best clue to a nation's growth and development potential is the status and role of women. This is the greatest handicap of Muslim Middle Eastern societies today" ignores Japan, where the status of women is not all that much better than in Muslim countries, not to mention what the status of women was in England or the United States during their eras of industrialization. The reason I am not harsher on this book is Landes's willingness to mention what just about every other academic, IMF and World Bank advisor, politician, and pundit considers sacrilegious - that during their period of rapid development and industrialization all countries pursued protectionist policies. This includes England, Germany, France, the United States, and Korea to name only the more famous examples. Japan, as Landes points out, was prohibited by foreign intervention from instituting protective tariffs but more than compensated by developing non-tariff barriers to imports. Landes gives much evidence to support the argument that protecting your own market is a necessary, although certainly not sufficient, condition for development and it is clear that he supports it. Unfortunately , for reasons of not being drawn and quartered by his colleagues in academia, he can never bring himself to state so explicitly. It is disappointing that in a book where he relishes taking on sacred cow after sacred cow he is unwilling to take on the biggest of them all in modern economic theory - free trade. However, he at least takes on the ridiculous arguments about comparative advantage. He cleverly, and accurately, points out present day Germans are better off due to their 19th Century ancestors not having followed the advise of economists to stick with their "comparative advantage" of growing wheat and trading it for British manufactures. While I obviously do not agree with the central thesis of the book it is a thought-provoking look at a very important topic and readers of all backgrounds and points of view will gain new insights. For that reason this is a book which should be read.
Rating:
Summary: The other half of a pair of indispensible books
Review: I did not agree with everything in this book, but I sure learned a lot from reading it.
I read this book because I was starting to read John Hobson's _Eastern_Origins_of_Western_Civilisation_. In Hobson's introduction, he made it clear that his book is largely a response to the view of history represented by the book I am reviewing right now. I stopped reading Hobson's book and read this one first, and I am very glad I did. (For one thing, Landes has written a terrific example of a history book that is actually enjoyable to read, as well as informative.)
As a conversation, these two books have a great deal to offer. Neither is completely balanced, but between them, they cover a great deal of ground, both in terms of historical content and in terms of how the two authors understand the same events. Reading these two books together taught me a great deal, both about history, and about the historian's profession.
I strongly recommend that if you read one of these two books, you read the other. Be warned that if you agree with one, the other will probably infuriate you, but if you can stay the course, you will be both better informed and a bit wiser at the end of it all.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding overview of western economic history
Review: Even the most sophisticated economists tend to have a myopic sense of history. In this clearly-written and well-researched volume, David Landes provides a compelling perspective on how and why nations have prospered or struggled.
Read this and you will gain a larger persective on today's economic and social conditions.
Rating:
Summary: Proof of his Theory are in every sociaty/nation
Review: According to author the reason for prosperity are personal liberty, work ethic, thrift, women's place in society, market economy. I think you need not look at different nations to seek the proof of this theory. Even within the same nation you will find regions which are more progressive and wealthy compared to others.
In India you will find that even within the same region some castes, notably, Brahmins, Jains, Gujarati Patels, are more educated, healthy, liberated and wealthy. The reasons are precisely those that have been mentioned before.
There is no point in getting hurt because of his brutally honest analysis of the situation. We cannot push these things under the carpet for long. The time has come to call spade a spade.
Unless you accept the problem and identify possible solutions, you cannot make any progress.
I agree with his analysis.
|
