Book Description

This book provides the first available introductory, comparative account of the rise of giant business corporations in America and Europe in the century before the Second World War. It discusses the evolution of firms such as Ford, Exxon, Unilever and Siemens, as well as introducing the reader to the major explanations that have been advanced by historians and economists in order to account for these developments in the global economic order. ... Read more

Book Description

This final work by a world-renowned economist will take its place among the classics of political economy Why do some economies do better than others? How does society encourage the kind of market economy that generates continually increasing incomes? How do particular styles of government affect economic performance? World-renowned economist Mancur Olson tackles these questions and others in what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus. Olson contends that governments can play an essential role in the development of markets. Reliable enforcement of private contracts and protection of individual rights to property depend on governments strong enough not to undermine them. His exploration of "market-augmenting governments" will stand as a cutting-edge work on economic growth and provide a useful framework in which to consider the Asian financial crisis and its aftermath. As Susan Lee noted in Forbes, "his pioneering insights might have won a Nobel Prize for Olson had he lived a bit longer."

"Power and Prosperity is an important book, written with clarity and verve. It is a great misfortune that Mancur Olson is not here to respond to the debates that it will surely provoke."-The Wall Street Journal ... Read more

Reviews (15)

A Fascinating Book
I read about this book in the Wall Street Journal and then snapped up a copy. Olson writes so clearly and accessibly that you almost don't realize you're reading a book about economics. Highly recommended for people interested in the future of the world economy and world politics.

Incomplete But Insightful
Mancur Olson takes the same approach that has worked well for economists in other areas: Assume that governments are run by self-interested, profit-maximizing "autocrats." This means that the country will score broad gains if the "autocrat" is a broad democratic majority, but even a dictatorial bandit will have some advantages if the bandit has long-term stability and is therefore interested in maximizing his profits over a long rather than a short term. Olson applies this formulation with success to the Soviet Union, showing why there was considerable growth in the days of Stalin but an inevitable sclerosis set in in the later years. He argues in his final chapter that the key to a successful transition from dictatorship to democracy is the assurance of individual property and contract rights, and that in the absence of such assurance the transition is certain to be problematic.

Olson died before he believed the book ready for publication, and the final effort shows it. Although the prose is polished and extremely readable, the argument tends to be quite skimpy. For example, he argues that the reason for widespread corruption is governmental price-fixing, which he applies to the Soviet experience. I would have liked more detail here, and in particular an analysis of the American experiences with prohibition and the ban on recreational drugs. Also, Olson's theory does not fully explain why third-world democracies have not been more successful. After all, you would think that at some point the "autocrats" would secure the individual rights necessary to maximize their "profits." It will necessarily fall to others to expand Olson's arguments and to determine if this plausible-sounding approach is correct. Meanwhile, we have this fascinating outline.

Excellent description of what went wrong in the Soviet Union
Parts of this book are a bit slow and more theoretical than I want, but the chapter on the Soviet Union is one of the best economic essays I've ever read.
It convincingly discredits the idea that a misguided ideology led Soviet planners astray, by describing how the policies appear shrewdly designed to maximize Stalin's wealth.
It also provides a compelling explanation of the more recent Soviet and post-Soviet economic problems by documenting the extent to which special interests have made their industry unproductive by adopting work rules/habits designed maximize job security.
I wish I could believe these problems were unique to countries afflicted with communism, but the book's reasoning suggests that many parts of our economy where bureaucracies aren't shut down if they fail to produce valuable results (much of government, businesses in industries with little competition, and I don't know what fraction of nonprofits) are equally wasteful.

very interesting book
Olson's book is very interesting and rewarding. It summarizes Mancur Olson's remarkable research on the politics of collective actions and governments in a clear and stimulating way. Can be recemmended to all readers interested in how different governments and institutions can affect the economy, and why.

A disappointment
Despite devoting a considerable portion of his book on "the Prisoner's Dilemma", Mr. Olson did not seem to understand the subject matter himself. The "Prisoner's Dilemma" he presented in this book is, well, not a dilemma at all.

Furthermore, his criticism against the Coase's Theorem is at best flimsy.

I could not help but give up half way through the book. ... Read more

Book Description

This book presents a unique account of how technological change is generated and the processes by which improved technologies are introduced into economic activity. The central theme of the book is the idea that technological changes are often "path dependent": their form and direction tend to be influenced strongly by the particular sequence of earlier events out of which a new technology has emerged. Individual chapters explore the particular features of new technologies in different historical and sectoral contexts. ... Read more

Book Description

A seminal account of Russia's transition to the market, it shows the tortuous development as a fledging market economy through the 1990's, right through to its spectular collapse in August 1998. ... Read more

Book Description

Clear, insightful, and nondogmatic, this book gives us a new appreciation for one of our most ubiquitous institutions.

From the wild swings of the stock market to the online auctions of eBay to the unexpected twists of the world's post-Communist economies, markets have suddenly become quite visible. We now have occasion to ask, "What makes these institutions work? How important are they? How can we improve them?"

Taking us on a lively tour of a world we once took for granted, John McMillan offers examples ranging from a camel trading fair in India to the $20 million per day Aalsmeer flower market in the Netherlands to the global trade in AIDS drugs. Eschewing ideology, he shows us that markets are neither magical nor immoral. Rather, they are powerful if imperfect tools, the best we've found for improving our living standards. A New York Times Notable Book. ... Read more

Book Description

Bell's prophetic 1976 forecast of the Information Age and how it would radically alter the social structure. With a new introduction by Bell.

In 1976, when Daniel Bell first published The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, he predicted a vastly different world-one that would rely upon an economics of information, as opposed to the economics of goods that had existed up to then. Bell argued that the new society would not displace the old one but rather overlay it in profound ways, much as industrialization continues to coexist with the agrarian sectors of our society.

In Bell's prescient vision, the post-industrial society would include the birth and growth of a knowledge class, a change from goods to services, and changes in the role of women. All of these would be based upon an increasing dependence on science as a means of innovation; as a means of technical and social change.

The Coming of Post-Industrial Society remains an important book for a whole new generation of politicians, economists, intellectuals, and students. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Venture In Social Forecasting
The Coming of the Post Industrial Society; A Venture in Social Forecasting by Daniel Bell

Daniel Bell is a renowned sociologist and post-Marxist, his prophetic book was first published in 1976 and republished in 1999 accompanied with a new foreword by the author. Since 1976 many of the concepts, theories and phrases Bell pioneered have become naturalised, universal conventions, and thus Bell should, most definitely, be considered a futurist.

This definitive book explores the 'coming age' and evaluates how this new Post Industrial Society will alter the structure of society. As Bell openly concedes 'the sociologist is always tempted to play the prophet and if not the prophet the seer' (Chapter 1). He does, however, explain that the 'forecasting' he attempts is different from predicting. For, forecasting is only possible where there are 'regularities and recurrences of phenomenon (and these are rare). It is only possible where one can assume a high degree of rationality on the part of the man who influences events-agreement to follow the rules'. And it seems that Bell's sociological background has given him the required understanding.

The new foreword shows considerable contemplation of the books success. Bell explains how there has been an unprecedented increase in the use of the phrase 'post industrial society' but he is not complacent, rather he underlines the lack of 'specificity as to what is connotes'. He describes how the general usage of the phrase, which is often used in reference to the decline in manufacturing and industry, does not acknowledge the parallel changes in social structure, social organisation and the new classes that will be, and have been created, specifically the class of knowledge (this theme is further explored in chapter 3, entitled The New Class Structure of the Post Industrial Society).[ Bell adamantly argues that his vision of the Post Industrial Society does not see the old one displaced by the new, rather a synthesis emerges in which the new society will overlay the old one in profound ways, much as industrialisation continues to coexist within the agrarian sectors of our society.] Thus it seems that Bell does not merely use the new foreword to hail his work a success but to redress, the misunderstood, misinterpreted or inadequately adopted parts of his social forecast.

Bell explains how it is inadequate to define the new society primarily by the services but he does see the productive nature of them. While society naturally embraces the three distinctions of industry as primary, secondary and tertiary in the new foreword Bell makes further distinctions by suggesting 'quaternary' (covering trade and finance) and 'quinary' (health and education), these are the involved in the economics of information not goods or labour. And thus it seems that while Bell has pioneered he wants to pioneer further. He further states that the central and novel feature of the Post Industrial Society is the 'codification of theoretical knowledge and new relation of science to technology'. Major developments of the 20th century came from revolutions in physics and biology as opposed to the 'inspired and talented tinkerers' like Alexander Graham Bell. This suggests the increasing dependence on science as a means of technical and social change, and science is wholly dependent on knowledge and information.

The shape of things to come
Absolutely amazing book! Castells has done it again! ... Read more

Book Description

Professor Landes's study, Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe, 1750-1914, first appeare as a chapter in volume VI of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe. He has now extended it by adding a full-scale analysis of modern industrial Europe from the First World War to the 1960s. In his new Introduction, Professor Landes discusses the characteristics, progress, and political, economic and social implications of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, France and Germany. He raises the general question: why was Europe the first to industrialize? His section on the inter-war years covers the effect of the First World War in accelerating the dissolution of the old international economy, the reasons for monetary instability and the consequences of monetary difficulties for the economic history of Europe. In particular he discusses the causes of the economic crisis of 1929-1932, the reasons for its severity and quasi-universality and for Britain's early and sustained recovery. An important theme is the impediments posed by generalized international egoism to the efficiency and growth of the European economies. In his final chapter on the economic recovery of Western Europe after the Second World War, Professor Landes examines the forces which have operated since the early 1950s to give Western Europe a period of unprecedented economic growth. He raises the vital question: is this recent boom a temporary phenomenon or the first stage in a new trend of more rapid growth, reflecting an acceleration in technological advance? ... Read more

Reviews (2)

The way economics shapes political societies
The task professor Landes have tried to achieve, and what he produces along it, is more important than that whole consistency of his work. Professor Landes makes economic history, not only describing historical processes but analyzing them with key concepts taken from basic economic theory.

Technological change creates opportunities for economic growth, but it could not explain, by itself, the whole historical process. Legal and political environment is needed to make real the economic growth that technological change makes possible. Even though, into the process, some elites and some social colectivities could see losses of power, income, and social recognition, and new models for colective and individual behaviour could upsurge. Professor Landes work explains the whole complexity of the big trends, of historical process, supported by the technological facts, the economic facts are consequence of this, and the economic theory we knew in sixties, and based on rigorous work on primary and secondary sources. His work shows, too, how the economic trends produced qualitiative consequences that economic theory could not predict because men in historical time, above all, are political entities more than economical entities. The national european states, and the national feelings, from the elites to the common man, sometimes peacefully, sometimes with social struggle, have given an specific path, and specific reactions, to the economic incentives that come from market (national and abroad) and from former regulation. The economic system and the politics produced, to each other, opportunities, setbacks, and limits.

My personal view on the value of this work is the science of history could use theoretical tools from other social sciences, but economics has to use history and its works to show better the accuracy of their concepts and method.

A very good work on economic history.

Good background reading, if slightly outdated
The Unbound Prometheus was published in 1969, so it is not exactly the latest call about economic history since 1750. But Landes makes a very good job at summarizing the basics about the most important economic issues of the past two hundred years: the role of market integration and technological change in Industrial Revolution (though, for the latter, see also Mokyr's Lever of Riches), the role of free trade in the mid-19th century Europe and world, the role of after-WW1 peace settlement in causing the Great Depression, the size and impact of the Marshall Plan and other reconstruction plans after WW2. However, if you are looking for detail on any of the topics, then Landes is, perhaps, not the right book for you (on the other hand, this text is usually used as a background reading for university courses in European Economic History). ... Read more

Book Description

Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest financial institution, played an important role in the expropriation of Jewish-owned enterprises during the Nazi dictatorship, both in the existing territories of Germany, and in the areas seized by the German army during World War II, particularly Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Drawing on new and previously unavailable materials, including branch records, and many from the Bank's own archives, Harold James examines policies that led to the eventual Genocide of European Jews. How much did the realization of the Nazi ideology depend on the acquiescence, the complicity, and the cupidity of individuals and economic institutions? Contradicting the traditional view that businesses were motivated by profit to cooperate with the Nazi regime, James closely examines the behavior of the bank and its individuals to suggest other motivations. James' unparalleled access and unusual perspective distinguishes this work as the only book to examine one company's involvement in the economic persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Harold James is Professor of History at Princeton University. He is a member of the Independent Commission of Experts investigating the political and economic links of Switzerland with Nazi Germany, and of commissions to examine the roles of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank. He is the author of several books on Germany economy and society, including Germany: The German Slump (Oxford University Press, 1986), A Germany Identity 1770-1990 (Routledge, 1993), and International Monetary Cooperation Since 1945 (Oxford University Press, 1996). He co-edited several books, including The Role of Banks in the Interwar Economy (Cambridge, 1991). James was also co-author of an earlier history of the commercial bank Deutsche Bank (Deutsche Bank 1870-1995, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1995) which won the Financial Times Global Business Book Award in 1996. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey. ... Read more

Book Description

Focusing on the master-slave relationship in Louisiana’s antebellum sugarcane country, The Sugar Masters explores how a modern, capitalist mind-set among planters meshed with old-style paternalistic attitudes to create one of the South’s most insidiously oppressive labor systems.As author Richard Follett vividly demonstrates, the agricultural paradise of Louisiana’s thriving sugarcane fields came at an unconscionable cost to slaves.

Thanks to technological and business innovations, sugar planters stood as models of capitalist entrepreneurship by midcentury. But above all, labor management was the secret to their impressive success.Follett explains how in exchange for increased productivity and efficiency they offered their slaves a range of incentives, such as greater autonomy, improved accommodations, and even financial remuneration. These material gains, however, were only short term.

According to Follett, many of Louisiana’s sugar elite presented their incentives with a "facade of paternal reciprocity" that seemingly bound the slaves’ interests to the apparent goodwill of the masters, but in fact, the owners sought to control every aspect of the slaves’s lives, from reproduction to discretionary income. Slaves responded to this display of paternalism by trying to enhance their rights under bondage, but the constant bargaining process invariably led to compromises on their part, and the grueling production pace never relented.The only respite from their masters’ demands lay in fashioning their own society, including outlets for religion, leisure, and trade.

Until recently, scholars have viewed planters as either paternalistic lords who eschewed marketplace values or as entrepreneurs driven to business success. Follett offers a new view of the sugar masters as embracing both the capitalist market and a social ideology based on hierarchy, honor, and paternalism.His stunning synthesis of empirical research, demographics study, and social and cultural history sets a new standard for this subject. ... Read more

Book Description

The essays included here are the "best sellers" of American economic history, the articles and chapters that most frequently appear on the syllabi of American economic history courses. Introductions add context, provide critical questions about the arguments and evidence, indicate important subsequent works, and suggest additional readings.Also included are a glossary and an appendix that provide a clear, simple introduction to regression analysis, necessary for reading the increasingly technical "cliometric" articles in the field. ... Read more

Book Description

Problems of fair division, equitable cost-sharing, division of a joint benefit, or the choice of a truly democratic voting rule are familiar subjects of dispute in technologically advanced democracies. This book provides a comprehensive and unified presentation of these technically heterogeneous subjects that are linked by common axioms. ... Read more

Reviews (20)

Plain english explanation of economic theories and history
One of the things that interested me in Krugman is he is one of the most cited current economists. I can see why, he breaks down complicated economic discussion into plain English - and explains how some other people who break down economics in easy-to-understand English are [unacceptable], whether conservative (supply siders) or liberal (strategic traders), and how some of them are not, from Keynes to Friedman.

I've been trying to bone up on economics, and this book has helped me understand concepts I've heard the names of before in other sources like rational expectations, monetarism, Keynesianism, supply side economics and so forth. He also gives a picture of the US (and European) economy in the 20th century, and a history of economic thought from the conservative attack on Keynes led by Friedman, to the liberal counter-attack up until 1994, when the book was written.

For anyone trying to understand economics, this is a good book, without a right-wing axe to grind since he's a liberal. I've been reading the critiques of capitalist political economy from Marx to his successors (as well as some socialists outside of the Marxian sphere, though the Marxists due dominate socialist economic discourse up to this day), and from that standpoint, Krugman looks something like a bourgeois liberal, but his work is enlightening and seems honest so I recommend it.

Outstanding look at economics
I read "Peddling Prosperity" over a vacation, expecting to read a few pages, put it down, and pick up something more entertaining. (I had the latest Grisham waiting in the wings.) How interesting can a book about economics be? Answer- my Grisham never got read. I couldn't put this down.

Typically economic treatises are uniformly dull, the author spending pages re-stating his thesis, over and over and over. As one of my college professors told me, economists have two basic rules-

1) The market can decide best. 2) Anyone who questions rule #1 is a communist.

I would add a third-

3) bore the reader with technical jargon.

Krugman, mercifully, avoids these traps. He distills economics down to its most basic elements in plain English. Krugman is also a more critical thinker than most of his counterparts, carefully making the argument for Keynesian economics and debunking the myths of Reaganomics. Even the most ardent free market enthusiast will find it difficult to explain away Krugman's notes about wealth distribution during the 1980s (the rich got richer, the poor got poorer) and about the disastrous effects of Reagan overseas. Protectionists will have difficulty as well in refuting Krugman's analysis of the disastrous effects of tariff barriers and the insignificance of America's trade deficit.

The author has it all correct- the fallacy of protectionism (the strategic traders), the failure of Reaganomics, the positive role government can play in American economic life. What makes "Peddling Prosperity" such a good book is Krugman's skill in translating his thoughts into passages a reader without a Phd can understand. Good work.

What we know and what we don¿t
To many, Krugman's emphasis on what we don't know about economics is probably disappointing. A whole lot of Peddling Prosperity is devoted to the puzzle of the non-existing productivity growth during the 70s and 80s, and Krugman's conclusion is: we just don't know why productivity had fallen so abruptly. Written in 1994, the productivity surge of the 1990s was just starting, and PK had of course no idea that the high productivity growth would recover.

There are some things economist do know, and PK's introduction to Keynes, the attack on Keynes by the monetarists, and the revenge of keynesianism is excellent. Like most real experts, PK is fully able to explain complicated matters in an understandable manner. The story is well written, with plenty of anecdotes to spice it up.

PK's distinction between the 'professors' and the 'policy entrepreneurs' is a main theme in the book, but he is taking himself too seriously. Anybody really interested in economics is because it is about people, their needs, their wants, their motivations and so on. That clever economist/professors engage in and policymaking or public debate (as PK himself is heavily into), shouldn't lead to lack of credibility. Krugman is also missing the bottom line in the tax debate: people disagree about the best tax and redistribution policy, not mainly because someone believe this or that system is more efficient, but because it is fairer. And it is quite possible to argue, on the grounds of fairness, both that rich people should pay an awful lot in taxes and that they should pay a little, both coercive sharing and keeping their income.

Krugmans brilliant and well-written story about the rise of monetarism during the 1970s earns, and of neo-Keynesians in the late 80s, is great. The best part, though, is his clear explanation of the huge misconception of comparing a nation with a corporation. The comparison is so far-fetched and leading to so much bad policy, yet so normal, that the issue should be dealt with at primary school. And Krugman's explanation is a very good place to start.

Great Book
I never read a book on economics before this one because I could never understand them. I don't know why I picked this one to read, but it was wonderful. It is the first time ever that I have actually understood anything at all about economics. Reading this book was a wonderful experience. Actually out of five stars I would give it ten.

Very professional and witty
Published in 1994, PEDDLING PROSPERITY by Paul Krugman establishes the intellectually substantial foundation of the current political economy columnist for the New York Times. Today he has a name as a leading critic of the tax cutting fiscal policies of a younger President Bush, but this book is proof of his ability to outwit nonsense in the political arena whenever he is sure that the mainstream university professors of economics will back him up. Reading this book was like a roller coaster ride for me, bringing back that sense of uneasiness that I never escaped as long as Nixon was alive. The best evidence that this book was finished before Nixon's death in 1994 is the footnote on page 260 about computing overall productivity according to `a recent study by Robert Lawrence of Harvard University and Matthew Slaughter of MIT: "Trade and U.S. Wages: Great Sucking Sound or Small Hiccup" (forthcoming).'

In this great roller coaster ride, Chapter 10 at the end of the book was the sudden dip in total darkness near the end, when a strobe flash and digital camera took a picture of each car in the instant of weightlessness that looks like shock in the prints available where riders exit from the roller coaster cars. There was a warning in Chapter 9 that we were heading in this direction: "So there won't really be a race to see who gets the global jackpot." (p. 242). It just gets funnier than I remember it being at the time. Sudden drops began happening even before this book was finished for the political movement of those `who came briefly to be known as "Atari Democrats," . . . (The label was dropped after Atari moved its production to Asia in 1983.)' (pp. 249-250).

The American economy continues to grow, as is usually expected, and the big story in this book is how those who absorb an idea or two from economists promote political remedies when economic problems become too obvious. I like the charts in the book, particularly Figures 1 (p. 25), 2 (p. 42), and 3 (p. 46), which are explained well in the text. Figure 2 has data from 1961 to 1969 showing a clear line, the Phillips curve, with a tremendous increase in inflation for unemployment rates less than 4 percent. Assuming that the 1960s reflected economic reality, "This conclusion was actually written into law: the much-ignored Humphrey-Hawkins bill of 1978 in fact requires the U.S. government to seek to achieve a 4 percent unemployment rate." (p. 43). A larger chart in Figure 3 shows how the events spiraled out of control, with unemployment over 8 percent in 1975 and inflation exceeding 12 percent in 1974, 1979, and 1980. I think Robert Mundell called this moving the Phillips curve in his Nobel Prize Address in 1999 on international currencies in the twentieth century, but Krugman's label for "Figure 3 . . . But that tradeoff fell apart, just as Milton Friedman had predicted." (p. 46) would seem to imply that the curve was fictitious all along.

Political economy seems to be more like generating enthusiasm for a particular thing. University economists are so entangled in maintaining their overall big picture that people engaged in a single task are likely to become far too eccentric to suit the professors. Krugman attempts to employ his generalizations about supply-siders like "Robert Bartley, who has run the editorial page of `The Wall Street Journal' since 1972" (p. 83) to "The one figure in the supply-side group who does not at first blush fit the outsider image is Robert Mundell, who is surely the movement's intellectual luminary." If you can believe Mundell's Nobel Prize Address of 1999, Mundell wrote a paper for the IMF in 1961 which suggested tax cuts in the American income tax which did not actually take effect until 1964, but which started a lot of people thinking about how they could increase their income if taxes became less prohibitive. After that worked for a while, Krugman reports: "The fact is that around 1970 Mundell veered off from conventionality in a number of ways. Some of these were superficial: he began to wear his hair long and to speak in a low mumble." (p. 88). It sounds to me like a bad case of young too late but dumber than ever. No sense keeping up appearances when the world fails to conform to professional standards. My own interpretation of what next??? for people in those times is a Heraclitus philosophy: You can't go down twice to the same river.

My other favorite wits of political economy do not do well in PEDDLING PROSPERITY, and it is hard to imagine how that could be improved in today's world. "Thorstein Veblen went from his brilliant THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS to write a really terrible book (THE ENGINEERS AND THE PRICE SYSTEM) purporting to explain economic slumps." (p. 26). The explanation which follows, of recession being caused by financial conditions when the desire in the marketplace is primarily for more money instead of more goods, called "Keynes's Theory of Recessions" (pp. 26-34) is the intellectual foundation for much of the analysis in this book.

John Kenneth Galbraith gets credit for thinking we should "see our political process as a faithful representation of the interests of the only part of the electorate that matters--the relatively well-off top 20 percent of the income distribution." (p. 6). That might be a larger group than the number of people who could vote in America when the United States Constitution was drafted in the 1780s. Galbraith comes up again as an example of "This almost Freudian conflict between professors and pundits is always ready to break out; . . ." (p. 13). In 1967, Galbraith's THE NEW INDUSTRIAL STATE was like a description of the state of mind of people working or directing the tasks of workers. Not a bit like thinking that could win the Nobel Prize in Economics. ... Read more

Book Description

This book is a concise and lucid review of the strengths and weaknesses of the British motor industry during the one hundred years since its foundation. Placing the industry firmly in a European context, the author first assesses its achievements before 1960, and then tests the various explanations that have been offered to explain its decline in the past thirty years. He examines the role of government, of the trade unions, of management and of the multinationals, all of which have been seen as major players in the industry's demise. ... Read more

Book Description

A single theme is pursued in this book - the trade between peoples of differing cultures through world history. Extending from the ancient world to the coming of the commercial revolution, Professor Curtin's discussion encompasses a broad and diverse group of trading relationships. Drawing on insights from economic history and anthropology, Professor Curtin has attempted to move beyond a Europe-centred view of history, to one that can help us understand the entire range of societies in the human past. Examples have been chosen that illustrate the greatest variety of trading relationships between cultures. The opening chapters look at Africa, while subsequent chapters treat the ancient world, the Mediterranean trade with China, the Asian trade in the east, and European entry into the trade with maritime Asia, the Armenian trade carriers of the seventeenth century, and the North American fur trade. Wide-ranging in its concern and the fruit of exhaustive research, the book is nevertheless written so as to be accessible and stimulating to the specialist and the student alike. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A founding work of World History
I first encountered this book as part of my grandmother's current reading shortly after its publication. I next saw it as part of the required reading for an upper division undergraduate history course. I mention these to note that this book will interest the casual reader of history or the serious student. While it is scholarly, it's subject takes the reader on such a world tour that it practically qualifies as a travelogue. Curtin's accessible presentation makes this is an exciting as well as an informative read.

Curtin describes how the urge to exchange the goods uniquely available to specific areas has encouraged cultures to meet and exchange ideas as well as goods throughout the centuries. His examples of these exchanges, ranging from Greek city states and West African kingdoms, to Portuguese explorers in the interior of Brazil and Indonesian merchants so accustomed to sailing in search of commerce that they have no home on land, demonstrate the effects on individuals and societies of these meetings, and the accomodations neccesary between merchants to negotiate their differences and get the goods they desire. Along the way we see familiar historical characters in a new light, as with Curtin's discussion of the British trade with Russia and a reexamination of British-Indian trade from the Indian perspective, or his consideration of Spanish competition with the Dutch for South East Asian trade. Players one might not have considered emerge as major powers, as with Armenian trade, from their participation in the Silk Road between Ancient Rome and China, to their invaluable role as cross cultural ambassadors for most of Eurasia up to the nineteenth century. Curtin closes with a consideration of the birth of the modern global industrial economy.

This is a valuable book for any serious student of history and an interseting read for the lay reader as well. ... Read more

Book Description

This book is a major contribution to a controversial area of economic history and to the debate about the nature of British society in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Translated into English for the first time, it provides a detailed analysis of the banking community of London when the City was the undisputed financial center of the world.Attention is paid to the social origins, education careers, business interests and fortunes of its members, to the networks of relationships of its most important dynasties, as well as to the political influence of the world of banking. ... Read more

Book Description

"Every hour spent reading Banking on Baghdad will be well rewarded. The historical detail is fascinating; Edwin Black’s mastery of it reads like a detective story and thriller combined, and the relevance of the past has seldom been so graphically portrayed. This is a gripping expos´e of historic follies, fantasies, and ferocity, taking place in a region that is today still a focus and storm center as it has so often been. Oil forms a twisting thread of wealth, corruption, and greed. The cast of characters and their bizarre behavior could come out of a novel; but this is fact not fiction, more endlessly intriguing and absorbing than any novel could be."
–Sir Martin Gilbert, author of Churchill: A Life, Israel: A History, The First World War: A Complete History, and The Second World War: A Complete History

Praise for Edwin Black’s Prior Books

On IBM and the Holocaust:

"An explosive new book... Backed by exhaustive research, Black’s case is simple and stunning: that IBM facilitated the identification and roundup of millions of Jews during the 12 years of the Third Reich....Black’s evidence may be the most damning to appear yet against a purported corporate accomplice."
–Michael Hirsh, Newsweek

"Black has tracked down document after document witnessing that Holleriths inventoried prisoners for death at Bergen-Belsen and other concentration camps....IBM and the Holocaust is a disturbing book–all the more so because its author doesn’t prescribe what should be done about sins committed more than half a century ago. It is left to readers to decide."
–Ron Grossman, The Chicago Tribune

On War Against the Weak:

"Edwin Black, author of the radical and revelatory IBM and the Holocaust, is a dangerous man. He tells us things we don’t want to hear, like, for instance, this:
‘The scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island.’ His groundbreaking War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race is a scary and necessary book."
–Adrienne Miller, Esquire

"In a new book, War Against the Weak, investigative reporter Edwin Black makes the case that 20th Century American proponents of eugenics...had substantive ties to the architects of Hitler’s racial extermination machine... Black lays bare the veins of collaboration between American eugenicists and Nazi scientists."
–Dan Vergano, USA Today ... Read more

Book Description

In writing this textbook, Mankiw has tried to put himself in the position of someone seeing economics for the first time. The authorÆs conversational writing style is superb for presenting the politics and science of economic theories to tomorrowÆs decision-makers. Because Mankiw wrote it for the students, the book stands out among all other principle texts by intriguing students to apply an economic way of thinking in their daily lives. Receiving such a praise as "perhaps the best ever" textbook in economic principles, itÆs no wonder MankiwÆs prize project has quickly become one of the most successful books ever to be published in the college marketplace. ... Read more

Reviews (28)

The best and most fun economics textbook
Years back I read in The Economist an excellent review about this textbook at the time it first came out. The article suggested that the bible of econ textbook had been so far the one written by Paul Samuelson. But, The Economist book review made an excellent case that Mankiw textbook should become the prevailing introduction to economics textbook. Why is that? Well, Mankiw book covers all the subject and the technicalities Samuelson textbook covers. Additionally, Mankiw book is hip, current, entertaining, and fun to read. His economic examples are full of pop stars, movie stars, sports heroes, and other mass media public figure we all know off. He brings in as supportive educational material many columns from the Wall Street Journal, or New York Times written by famous economists such as Paul Krugman, and Lester Thurow among others.

A day after reading The Economist book review I bought the book. I read and studied it with so much pleasure over the next two months that I felt I was back in some of the best classes I had ever taken in undergrad and grad school. Today, as part of my work as an internal financial consultant for a major U.S. bank, I often do research projects regarding fairly esoteric economics issues. And, I often review and study specific chapters of this book to refresh my economics foundation. I gather by now you can tell I love this book. Anyone who has an interest in economics should acquire this book first as educational enjoyment, and second as an invaluable reference.

I wish all professors can teach as good as Mankiw does
I totally absolutely agree with the opinions of [other reviewers]. I am a student from Norway, and with limited Macroeconomics books available in Norwegian, we have to chew the most incomprehensible Macroeconomics book written by our own professor. He teaches at our college so we have no other choice than using the Macroeconomics book he wrote. Students say there is a book mafia system at our school, meaning we only use the books written by our lecturers whether the books are well written or not.

Lucky enough, the professor who wrote the most incomprehensible Macroeconomics book at my college also recommended us to read Mankiw's book and even claimed that this was the best Macroeconomics book ever written...even though, he said, it was at a slightly lower level than what he taught us. What he means by "at a slightly lower level" is probably due to the fact that our professor chokes the students with so much incomprehensible math and so many formulas which we do not understand and do not know how to relate to the real world unless we take Ph.D degree in Economics, whereas Mankiw refrains from doing so and instead gives us a passion to learn Economics and a critical mind to explore Economics issues further .

Last semester, I finally ended up reading Mankiw's book for pleasure, knowledge, and understanding, and dropped my Macroeconomics course with the incomprehensible professor and his equally incomprehensible book. I do not want to take a course which I do not understand and which I am implicitly forced to answer the exam questions in the style my Macroeconomics teacher wants. Yes, I do lack a credit and a grade in Macroeconomics, but I do possess a much better understanding than my classmates who just memorize rawly our Macroeconomics professor's way of answering. If our professor used Mankiw's book instead of his own book, he would certainly produce much better students who possessed excellent understanding in Economics and passion to study this wonderful subject.

Students must pay a hefty price when they end up with a professor who cannot teach and write. I wish we had more choices.

A Classic
This book is a simple introduction to Economics - a must for every student of the subject. It is a true classic.

Principles of Economics
This work in question is designed for a two-semester introductory course in economics, this textbook covers micro- and macroeconomics. After dealing with the basic tools of supply and demand, he looks at government intervention in market allocations, firm and industrial organization behavior, labor markets, the behavior of the real economy over the long run, and the macroeconomics of open economies, and short run fluctuations within long run trends. Similarly to many textbooks on economics and many other subjects, there is little acknowledgment of controversy within the field.

Great economics book!
This book took an otherwise dull subject and made it interesting. This was the 3rd economics book that I read, and I found this one to be the best. ... Read more

Book Description

When the people of British North America threw off their colonial bonds, they sought more than freedom from bad government: most of the founding generation also desired the freedom to create and enjoy good, popular, responsive government. This book traces the central issue on which early Americans pinned their hopes for positive government action--internal improvement.

The nation's early republican governments undertook a wide range of internal improvement projects meant to assure Americans' security, prosperity, and enlightenment--from the building of roads, canals, and bridges to the establishment of universities and libraries. But competitive struggles eventually undermined the interstate and interregional cooperation required, and the public soured on the internal improvement movement. Jacksonian politicians seized this opportunity to promote a more libertarian political philosophy in place of activist, positive republicanism. By the 1850s, the United States had turned toward a laissez-faire system of policy that, ironically, guaranteed more freedom for capitalists and entrepreneurs than ever envisioned in the founders' revolutionary republicanism. ... Read more

Book Description

This book provides the first unifying analysis of the range of economic reasons for the clustering of firms and households.Its goal is to explain further the trade-off between various forms of increasing returns and different types of mobility costs.The main focus of the analysis is on cities, but it also explores the formation of other agglomerations, such as commercial districts within cities, industrial clusters at the regional level, and the existence of imbalance between regions. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

interesting historical overview, useful documents
I found this publication useful and interesting in a vast field with many good publicatons.The value added here is that the authors brought together a good historical selection of the original documents fromofficial EU Member State governments and other sources.This gives a verygood feel of how the viewpoints were developing at the time.Theintroductory texts for each period covered also provide a concise overviewand analysis of the period, main events and actors.Interesting andrecommended. ... Read more