Customer Reviews

The Birth of Plenty : How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

William Bernstein is an excellent economics and business writer. Bernstein has the ability to teach and write about technical concepts in the most accessible way. "The Birth of Plenty" is no exception. This book covers such a breadth of subjects regarding economics, political science, history from the antiquity to nowadays.

His theory is not unique. The countries who prosper are the ones who give their citizen the right to own their property, to communicate freely with each other, to practice the scientific method to replace outdated traditional knowledge, and to take business risk with other people's money. In summary, the countries who prosper are the ones who allow individuals to reap the fruits of their risk-taking efforts. These are not new and original ideas.

After all, there is a long list of economics writers who pretty much said the same thing starting with Adam Smith back in 1776 in the "Wealth of Nations." More recently, Hernando de Soto wrote about the exact same subject in "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else." Also, David Landes' book "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor" adopts the exact same theory as Bernstein's. My list could go on an on. This is because it is a subject that fascinates and never gets exhausted.

Even though all the above books are excellent and some are true classics in comparative international economics, Bernstein's book shines because it is so much more readable, accessible, and entertaining to read. While the others come across as dull economics professors, Bernstein comes across as an incredibly lively journalist. He turns his treaty on economics history into a real page turner giving David Browne's "Da Vinci Code" a run for his money [in the page turning department]. Thus, by reading this book you will learn just as much if not more than the other books I have mentioned, and you will have so much more fun.

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.

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."

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.

Gertrude Stein called Ezra Pound, "a village explainer," and said that was fine if one happened to be a village. Author and historian William J. Bernstein is an explainer, so put on your village thinking cap. This sprawling book skips over a broad surface of economic history, theology, sociology, engineering, politics and mechanics, like a flat pebble over a smooth pond. Readers with scant grounding in these disciplines can still have a good time as they gaze slightly slack-jawed at this colorful, fast-moving assemblage of facts, theories and prejudices, all mixed, mingled and as surprising as a carnival parade. Readers who know these subjects, on the other hand, will relish the sweep of Bernstein's saga even if they balk at the inevitable simplifications, exaggerations, contradictions and foggy facts that result from compressing world economic history into 400 pages. Bernstein arranges his history around the four pillars that, he says, support continual economic growth: property rights, the scientific method, capital markets and communications. Given that framework, his presentation is logical and lively. We liked this entertaining read, which is imbued with a history buff's excitement.

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.

This book contains many ideas about the causes of economic growth that are approximately right, but rarely backs them up with good arguments.
He starts by saying four institutions are needed to escape from a Malthusian trap: property rights (rule of law), reason (scientific methods), capital markets, and fast transportation/communication. But later when discussing why some countries were slow to develop, he adds ad hoc explanations (e.g. "excessive military expenditure" "reliably derails great nations").
The biggest shortcoming of the book is that it ignores evidence that China provides a counter-example to his main claims. He doesn't acknowledge expert claims that parts of China around 1800 had a degree of property rights and rule of law that was comparable to England at that time, nor does he discuss the recent dramatic Chinese takeoff that happened with a mediocre degree of property rights and rule of law.
He gives many hints about why those four institutions are helpful, but provides little evidence that any one is essential. About the closest he comes to providing rigorous evidence is a graph indicating how much of economic growth appears to be explained by a Rule-of-Law indicator. He follows that with a similar graph of how government spending levels explain economic growth, and claims the negative effect of government spending would be invisible without the computed trend line, but the rule-of-law trend is more impressive. I see those graphs differently. The most obvious trend is that government spending over about 15 to 18% (of GDP?) reduces growth, with no obvious pattern for lower spending levels. The most obvious trend in the rule-of-law graph is that low values on the rule-of-law indicator are associated with larger variations in economic growth, which is somewhat contrary to his claim that such values reliably prevent growth.
The section I found most valuable was the one describing reasons for thinking that 16th century Holland created the beginnings of the industrial revolution.
There are enough misleading or false statements in the book to convince me not to trust him. For example, he refers to eclipse prediction around 1700 as a spectacular change to what was previously a mystery. He appears unaware that eclipses had been predicted more than a millennium earlier.
He often digresses into anecdotes that have no apparent relevance. For example, he claims "a healthy market for government debt is, in fact, essential for funding business". After giving two implausible theoretical reasons for that claim, he says it was "vividly demonstrated in the U.S." in 1862, but then gives a description of how government bonds were sold, without mentioning anything about the effect on business.
His discussion of the possible trade-offs between inflation and unemployment makes a claim that increased unemployment caused more unhappiness than "an identical rise in inflation". But inflation is measured in different units that unemployment. If we happened to measure inflation in percent per presidential election, the naive comparison would work much differently. (He is subtly misinterpreting a serious paper that is hard to fully explain to laymen).
His advice to undeveloped nations includes "before a nation builds roads ... it must first train lawyers", which makes me doubt his understanding of what causes the rule of law.

just finished this book, and I enjoyed reading it. For economic history, this is pretty light an entertaining stuff. I'd recommned it if you like Guns, Germs and Steel. However, a precaution. Bernstein's strong suit is not history. He uses historical examples to try to illustrate his points of what allows for a strong economy (property rights, innovation, capital), but his history is either not quite accurate, or slightly misrepresented every so often. I learned more history from Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle than this book, and I would recommedning reading a few cursory texts on the Scientific Revolution and the 16/1700s before reading this.

I would recommend this book, as I enjoyed it, but definately far from five-star material. Very easy to read, but be forwarned if you want to accept his history as gospel (see other reviews).

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.