Rating: 
Summary: Unique, persuasive, explanatory
Review: The author goes to great length in trying to explain why some societies are currently wealthy and others so desperately poor. Especially telling are the stories on the unlikely - how a small backward nation like England came to control 1/4 of the world (trade not despotic imperialism) and why area with seemingly insurmountable leads - Arabs, China, Spain/Portugal lost influence, power and wealth.He emphasizes not only the geographic and periodic reasons but the technological and particularly the intellectual reasons. He shows that ideas can and do affect the way history turns out. Too many times our history in schools is taught from a distance. In an effort to convince ourselves that all cultures are morally equivalent, all comparisons between cultures are avoided. Yet it is the intellectual stimulation, the ideas generated by great men and women that drive nations onward. The author demonstrates that a nation can take nothing for granted. Inertia never succeeds in the long run.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the Three
Review: I read Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond) and The Wealth of Man (Peter Jay) prior to this excellent economic history. I found the three highly complementary. Diamond overlooks important cultural attributes which are a part of the explanation such as the Aztec desire to take prisoners for later sacrifice versus kill enemies outright, the shocking brutality of the Spaniards in their slaughter of Arawaks or the military advantage of democratic societies.
Rating:
Summary: Consider the nature of the subject.
Review: The book loses one-half star based on the author's insistence on using parenthetical phrases in every other paragraph. And the other one-half star is for his vocabulary: It could have been toned down just a skosh. There is no need for so many words to make a point that can be explained in a simpler way. The idea of the book was supposed to be a synopsis of EVERYTHING of significance that has happened over the last millenium. When considered that people have written entire books just about the Reconstruction period of the United States (and still left issues open to question), can it reasonably be expected that the author will be able to explore every single detail of every issue that he raised in the book? Not likely. If this book is understood to be an alternative to some of the theses presented by the likes of Murray, Herrnstein, Jensen, Rushton, and Lee Kwan Yew (i.e., some people are inherently genetically inferior and they DESERVE their failure), then it serves its purpose very well. And that is to show that societies are very complicated institutions and that myriad possibilities exist that can derail their potential for vertical mobility. Kudos to the author for explaining to the uninformed (of which I happen to not be one in this case) about China's smothering hubris as a reason for its decline over the last 900 years. In fact, it can be read in a much less demanding way just to get a general idea of what happened in some particular period (i.e., the labor unions and class divisions in the United Kingdom that he feels led to a lot of their decline), with authors who are SPECIALISTS in that field to fill in the details/ construct the arguments and counterarguments. With that understanding, this book can be taken in the spirit in which it was meant.
Rating:
Summary: Many of the reviewers below
Review: Who so wholeheartedly accept Landes' reasons for the spread of Western thought would do well to read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel to see a highly plausible alternative view (one that, in my view, makes far more sense than Landes' thesis.) That said I enjoyed the book and agree with many of the sentiments he expresses, but one can't read one book on the spread of European cultural values and decide that it tells the entire truth.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting new perspective on history
Review: Landes provides a very interesting look at the history of nations and how their economies developed. The book goes back hundreds of years in explaining current matters that we almost forget to question. (Why is India so poor? and Europe so rich?) The answers are not simple so the book occasionally gets too complicated. In the end though the book is entertaining, enlightening and even an investment of your time. Also, too be read - Guns, Germs and Steel. A great prologue to this which will bring yet another layer to the debate.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect antidote to Diamond's nonsense
Review: Thank you Mr.Landes for having the audacity to tell the truth:that Western man's insistence on the freedom of the individual,free markets,democratic government,scientific inquiry,all tempered by the bonds of Judeo-Christian faith,have been the prime reasons why European civilization has been adopted as a model around the world.It is a simple fact:wherever the European model has been tried,whether in Japan,southeast Asia,even China now,the result has been higher standards of living,greater individual freedom and the erosion of the tribalist,authoritarian mindset that still besets most African and Middle Eastern nations and hence,makes their progress impossible.Most African and Middle Eastern countries are so busy with their civil conflicts and insistence on living in the past they have yet to provide themselves basic necessities like plumbing,medicine and have no institutions which develop medicines or technologies that could help them modernize.Their squalor continues,and any attempts by the West to help are usually met with resistence.It is fashionable for the leftist establishment today to try and discredit Western civilization and proclaim all civilizations equal.Funny thing though,none of the people who think such things are in any hurry to pack their bags and move to a great place like Rwanda or Haiti.I wonder why that is?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Review: A thick book, nicely written and full of information. I could not
put this book down once I opened it. It will be of use in my
next college course on international relations. I do recommend
this book.
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking book
Review: Book is a very nice overview of history from an important, if not controversial perspective: what makes some societies prosper economically and others fail--such book is bound to offend some, especially if Landes' analysis leads to conclusions different from their politics. I think Landes did a great job tackling the enormous undertaking. There are some real little jewels to be found. Highly recommended for business/economics students or those that seek to have an objective understanding of history (though you might not agree with him).
Rating: 
Summary: book is a personal commentary, but not good history
Review: This book is a commentary, and however amusing it may be to some, it is not "good history".
Landes brutally manipulates his citations throughout to support his views, which are so eurocentric and narrow minded that they are frequently insulting to anyone of intelligence. Scholors aware of relevent facts so obviously ignored will be frustrated, and those without this level of knowledge will be frightfully misinformed.
Don't let the number of citations fool you; this is not reliable information despite the author's Harvard credentials. In an effort to sell another book, he bulldozes over the truth and fertilizes his garden of bunk to feed his sensationalized thesis.
Rating:
Summary: Perpetuates the black legend against Portugal and Spain
Review: The work of Prof. David S. Landes is totally prejudiced by a strong bias against southern european catholic states, very especially, Portugal and Spain. He intends that the expulsion of the jewish communities from those countries in the last decade of the 15th century, and the predominance of the catholic religion also in those socities, led them to an historical state of underdevelopment, not yet completely surpassed, by opposition to what happened with the northern european societies, mainly the english and the dutch one. Firstly, although the expulsion of the jewish communities was a regretable evenment, it is useful to remember that the major part of their members found refuge in such countries like Morocco, the nowadays Bosnia, Greece and Turkey (the sefardi diaspora), but none of those places became an economical power by this simple fact. It is easily recognizable that they share an almost similar level of development with Portugal and Spain - Greece - or a worse one - Morocco, Bosnia and Turkey. Secondly, the two following centuries - the 16th and the 17th - were the portuguese and spanish golden age, an era of discoveries and imperial conquests, the highest peak on the power of the iberian nations, and, until the middle of the next century - the 18th -, the gap between northern and southern european countries was not so big as Prof. David S. Landes sustains. Really, he falls in contradiction when he quotes, on the page 232 of his book, a table of the estimated G.N.P. per capita for selected countries relative to the year of 1830 (in 1960 US$). It is possible to conclude that Portugal, even after three hundred years of claimed bigotry and fanaticism, had an income of US$ 250, Holland of US$ 270 and England of US$ 370. The difference is not, obviously, smashing... So, which are the real causes for the decline of the iberian space. We can sum up them in the following points: 1º) The financial exhaustion provoked by the ever increasing maintenance costs of the overseas colonial empires; 2º) The centralized political tradition of the iberian kingdoms and the permanent economical interventionism of the public authorities, suffocating the appearance of a strong private sector of businesses; 3º) The destruction of the jesuit order's schools net, which provided free education to young boys of all social classes and was replaced by... pure emptiness (a fatal blow to the portuguese population's level of literacy), in the second half of the 18th century, during the Marquis of Pombal's government (the Marquis was an enlighted despot ...); 4º) The political instability that deeply shaked Portugal and Spain in the first half of the 19th century, (greatly originated by anti-catholic forces), impeaching the sucessful and punctual launch of the industrial revolution. Concluding, although the book now reviewed posseses serious points of interest and, partially, explains why some countries are richer than others, I profoundly disliked his reading; instead of Prof. David S. Landes' work, I would recommend Paul Kennedy's "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", Michael Novak's "The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism", Amintore Fanfani's "Catholicism, Protestantism and Capitalism", Edward Peters' "Inquisition" and Guy Sorman's "The New Wealth of Nations".
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