Rating: 
Summary: An Invaluable Frame of Reference
Review: According to Joel Mokyr, economic growth is the result of four distinct processes: Investment (increases in the capital stock), Commercial Expansion, Scale or Size Effects, and Increase in the Stock of Human Knowledge (which includes technological progress proper as well as changes in institutions). Throughout his brilliant book, he correlates technological creativity with economic progress throughout classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and then into the later 19th century. In Chapter 12 ("Epilogue"), he further develops what is assuredly an invaluable frame-of-reference within which to understand our own time. Why does technological creativity occur? There are two components in the invention-innovation sequence: "technical problems involve a struggle between mind and matter, that is, they involve control of the physical environment." The other component is social: "For a new technique to be implemented, the innovator has to react with a human environment comprised of competitors, customers, suppliers, the authorities, neighbors, possibly the priest." This brief commentary has only inadequately suggested the scope and depth of Mokyr's rigorous inquiry into technological creativity and its contributions to economic progress. In weeks and months to come, there will be new "levers" which help to create new "riches." The historical context within which Joel Mokyr places these opportunities is a contribution of incalculable value.
Rating: 
Summary: Rather dry and dull.
Review: I found this book made a fascinating subject really boring. I had a tough time finnishing it. In all fairness, I learned quite a few interesting things. One of them being that the Greek civilization was not so great after all. This civilization developed great intellect, but no technological innovators. Their technology relied on harnessing the energy of their slaves period. They had no incentive to innovate, that would have caused an idle and restless underclass prone to civil unrest. I am sure there must be another much more interesting book about the same subject.
Rating:
Summary: Rather dry and dull.
Review: I found this book made a fascinating subject really boring. I had a tough time finnishing it. In all fairness, I learned quite a few interesting things. One of them being that the Greek civilization was not so great after all. This civilization developed great intellect, but no technological innovators. Their technology relied on harnessing the energy of their slaves period. They had no incentive to innovate, that would have caused an idle and restless underclass prone to civil unrest. I am sure there must be another much more interesting book about the same subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Some interesting facts, but that's about all
Review: I suppose that I'm reading this book for the wrong reason (a college course on the history of technology), yet I'm still turned off by the book's focus on "material goods" and "standard of living" rather than actual historical information. I also, unfortunately, feel the need to comment about the tone of the book. In Mokyr's commentary, there is what seems to me an unnecessarily condescending view towards other writers on the subject, ie. in almost every paragraph he argues with the case of another writer, and often with a marked lack of respect (I apologize for doing the same, here). In my opinion, this form of analysis grates on the nerves, and shows a great lack of originality as well. Lastly, the force of a falling object is not variable (page 49). This may be good enough for the economic majors out there, but it doesn't satisfy us engineers...
Rating: 
Summary: Good overview of technological progress
Review: It is a good book and surprisingly maligned by a couple of the other reviewers. h0td0gsh0p complains that Mokyr does not understand physics. However, the passage he quotes is entirely correct. The verge-and-foliot escapement mechanism was invented precisely because a falling object exerted a variable force on clock mechanisms due to differences in temperature, humidity, etc, which made earlier clocks highly imprecise. The reader from Bath complains that Mokry says that waterwheels were invented in Medival Europe. However, what Mokry actually says is that, "The waterwheel may NOT have been invented in Medieval Europe, but it was there that its use spread far beyond anything seen in earlier times." He points out that in 1086, the Domesday Book lists roughly 1 waterwheel for every 50 households! The Romans were capable of producing fairly advanced overshot waterwheels (as the one near Arles France), but there are very few examples (about 3 places?) that are known. Overall, I found the book very well researched.
Rating:
Summary: Good overview of technological progress
Review: It is a good book and surprisingly maligned by a couple of the other reviewers. h0td0gsh0p complains that Mokyr does not understand physics. However, the passage he quotes is entirely correct. The verge-and-foliot escapement mechanism was invented precisely because a falling object exerted a variable force on clock mechanisms due to differences in temperature, humidity, etc, which made earlier clocks highly imprecise. The reader from Bath complains that Mokry says that waterwheels were invented in Medival Europe. However, what Mokry actually says is that, "The waterwheel may NOT have been invented in Medieval Europe, but it was there that its use spread far beyond anything seen in earlier times." He points out that in 1086, the Domesday Book lists roughly 1 waterwheel for every 50 households! The Romans were capable of producing fairly advanced overshot waterwheels (as the one near Arles France), but there are very few examples (about 3 places?) that are known. Overall, I found the book very well researched.
Rating:
Summary: Of shoulder collars, waterwheels and the Chinese mystery
Review: The fall of the Berlin Wall did more than free Eastern Europe; it also freed historians from the somewhat chilling influence of Marxism and post-modernism. By the late 1990s, a new flowering of grand economic history had brought us David Landes's "the Wealth and Poverty of Nations" and Jared Diamond's sublime "Guns, Germs and Steel". But before them came 1990's "The Lever Of Riches", with Joel Mokyr setting out in wonderful detail the notorious economic mystery story called technological progress. Mokyr starts with the technologies of Greek and Roman antiquity, then moves on to the neglected breakthroughs of Western Europe's Dark Ages (the horseshoe, the horse collar, the waterwheel) and the Islamic Golden Age. But his history naturally centres on the Western European technological flowering that began around 1400. He caps this narrative with an ambitious discussion of an issue he regards as central to the mystery of technological development: the relative decline of China, the pre-eminent technological power of the centuries up to 1400. Mokyr, writing before the upsurge of interest in complex adaptive systems, ends the book comparing technological progress with biological evolution. The attempt is only partially successful, but you feel he's opening a new chapter of debate. "A society that has ceased to concern itself with the progress of the past will soon lose belief in its capacity to progress in the future," he concludes. And he's right.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Work
Review: The Lever of Riches explores the connection between the introduction of new techniques and the invention of new machinery and their corresponding effect on the rise on productivity, and the effect it had on the rising economic prosperity of society since the 17th century. It is fascinating reading, even for economic novices, since Mokyr explains his theory in brilliantly clear language. This book is a must read for all serious students of economics and history. It also should be read by all proponents of the "New Economy" paradigm, since important parallels can be found between the situations Mokyr describes, and the current, unprecendented expansion of the US economy.
Rating:
Summary: Great Information -- And Read the Reviews Too
Review: This is a scholarly and fact-focused treatment of a subject that has often been treated in a way that is meant to support a particular author's theoretical framework. The subject is complicated, and the book does a good job of dealing with the facts. As is so often the case, the most valuable part of the book is the commentary it elicits, so if you're going to go to the effort of reading the book, take the extra ten minutes to read whatever commentaries/reviews it gets, too. Just the ones on Amazon are pretty helpful for putting it in context.
dgc
Rating:
Summary: Ill-founded Deductions
Review: This very interesting but relatively brief book is devoted to the role of technological innovation in economic history. In a series of well written and very well referenced chapters, Mokyr discusses the role of technological innovation as a motor of economic growth and social transformation. Topics covered include a general discussion of technological innovation and growth, narrative chapters on technological innovation in the Classical world, Medieval Europe, Renaissance Europe, and the Modern world up to about 1850, discussions of why China and Classical civilization failed to develop an industrial civilization, and a discussion of the analogy between technological innovation and organic evolution. This is a work of synthesis; Mokyr presents little novel information and draws heavily on an impressive body of existing scholarship. Mokyr presents some interesting and important conclusions. Technological innovation is not driven primarily by ordinary market forces. The Industrial Revolution was the culmination in many centuries of technological innovation dating back to the Middle Ages. The failure of China to develop an Industrial Revolution remains a persistent puzzle. By about 1400, Chinese civilization was the world leader in many key technologies but then slides back and is eventually overtaken and then explosively surpassed by Europe. An important point made by Mokyr is that no nation or culture was a perpetual locus of technological innovation. In Europe, innovations were most common in Italy during the Renaissance, followed by major sites in the Low Countries and Germany, followed by the British explosion. Europe, with its divided polities, may have been more conducive to the development of industrial technology. European intellectual and scientific traditions may also have favored the emergence of industrial technology. Whatever factors responsible, Mokyr concludes that the emergence of industrial technology was probably an unusual and highly contingent event. This is similar to the conclusion reached by Kenneth Pomerantz in his recent book, The Great Divergence, an explicit comparison of economic development in China, Japan, and Europe. These conclusions and analyses completely undermine the common and facile notions of European capitalism leading automatically to the success of European culture.
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