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Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World Paperback – November 15, 2011

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Deirdre N. McCloskey (Author)
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Deirdre N. McCloskey (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars 31 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 592 pages
  • Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (November 15, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0226556743
  • ISBN-13: 978-0226556741
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsWhy are we now rich? Explaining the GREAT FACT!
By B Leyden on December 18, 2011
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
We in the Western World tend to take our present day wealth for granted, very much like an entitlement. And McCloskey makes clear just how very rich in real terms we are relative to most human kinds history. We don't stop to ask the logical follow-up question: Why are other societies - such as in Africa and South America - still so poor?

McCloskey's answer is that it is simple: (1)Give the "bourgeoisie" respect; and (2)give these same bourgeosie freedom. It is, according to this very mainline economic historian, THAT simple. It is the path that countries such as South Korea and China have successfully followed to achieve the same wealth and prosperity in little more than a generation.

McCloskey considers - and discards - alternative explanations for what economic historians describe as "The Great Fact." Explantions such as "colonial exploitation," Max Weber's Protestant work ethic, and the "Guns, Germs and Steel" advantage that European nations had over the rest of the world.

On the surface - and before you read her book - you might have concluded that the author was some kind of right-wing apologist. Nothing could be farther from the truth! As McCloskey makes clear, she started off her university and economic career from a Marxist orientation. She makes clear that her political inclinations are still mainly to the "left." In other words, the facts as she discovered them forced the conclusion.

McCloskey is a very literate - and cultured - thinker. This in my opinion is a very, very important book that deserves every intellectually inclined persons attention.
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3.0 out of 5 starsGreat Ideas, Unpleasant to Read
By Amazon Customer on October 6, 2011
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
McCloskey's primary idea in this book is that the explosion in wealth creation that started somewhere around 1800 is due to a changing attitude towards making money; it became cool ("dignified") to make money instead of vulgar, unclean, unholy, etc. She argues this forcefully and completely enough that it seems plausible that she's right and I found it convincing that the change in attitude was at least a factor in the extraordinary explosion of innovation and wealth.

While the ideas and content are excellent, I found the writing painful to read. It could've been written in one-third as many pages without skipping any content whatsoever. After a few hundred pages, it was hard to not start skimming.

I'd love for these ideas to be read by as many people as possible, but I wouldn't want to put anybody through the pain of reading this book. If you have a lot of time and want to read an interesting perspective on economic history, then I recommend buying and at least skimming this book. Otherwise, I'd skip it.
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4.0 out of 5 starsThought-Provoking But Not Successful
By P. Graham on January 4, 2011
Format: Hardcover
Foremost, Bourgeois Dignity is to be recommended because it offers an abundance of economic insights. Professor McCloskey deserves the highest praise for emphasizing the hugely important, predominant role of ideology and innovation in the unprecedented improvement in the standard of living since the close of eighteenth century.

Ultimately, however, Bourgeois Dignity fails to prove that what McCloskey terms "bourgeois dignity and liberty" are, to the virtual exclusion of every other factor, responsible for this economic revolution.

One problem is semantics. It seems that, in "bourgeois dignity and liberty", McCloskey means an ideology that promotes and rewards (materially and psychically) commerce and innovation. Fair enough, but McCloskey's choice of the word "dignity" is highly problematic.

In one historical meaning, in the sense of "being dignified", having dignity meant being worthy of honor, being illustrious, being highly esteemed. One was endowed with dignity by doing or accomplishing something honorable or illustrious or esteemed. In this sense, not everyone was inherently endowed with dignity: it had to be earned, and it could be forfeited. In this historical sense, McCloskey's use of the term "dignity" is not objectionable, and is faithful to the substance of the argument. For example, McCloskey writes of the "bourgeois revaluation" in Holland that started it all: "It became honorable - `Honorable', the aristocrat snorts! - to invent a machine for making screws or to venture in trade to Cathay." (p. 11)

However, in its modern usage, in the sense of the U.N.'s declaration that "all human beings are born...Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsThis work deserves serious attention
By Anders D. Mikkelsen on January 17, 2012
Format: Paperback
This is an excellent, though partial, explanation for why the world only recently became richer and richer. This work deserves, and is getting, serious attention.
The book does seem a bit wordy, but I found it easy to read quickly and understand.

Her goal is to show that there exists a `great fact,' that in the last 200 plus years vast numbers people are 16 to 100 richer than their peasant ancestors, and that typical economic explanations for the `great fact' are insufficient to explain the recent appearance in history of compound growth. She tackles each of the primary explanations in turn and shows that they cannot explain continual improvement. They involve re-distribution or re-shuffling, not a hundred fold wealth creation. The fact common argument that the west grew rich through exploiting and looting the peasants, workers, and third world, is disposed of by explaining at length that the real and imagined victims never had enough wealth in the first place to enrich the ever larger, ever spreading, ever wealthier middle class.

The big change was: Dignity of going in to trade and invention combined with liberty to innovate and trade freely. The paths to respectability lead not just narrowly to Throne and Altar. This explosion of applied innovation created wealth.

The sub-title is "Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World." If one is expecting a full scientific argument for what can explain it, this book offers the key as `liberty and dignity' for common people and especially bourgeois innovators, but does not unlock all the doors for you. Hopefully fuller documentation will be forthcoming.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 starsthe Kindle edition is not the same as the print ...

the Kindle edition is not the same as the print. The print edition has about 500 pages, but this Kindle edition is only one article with a few responses. Read more

Published 1 month ago by chuckwhite
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Nice and short, very to the point!

Published 2 months ago by R. Creemers
4.0 out of 5 starsLoved the book because of the facts provided

McClosey shreds the popular myths about why the voluntary exchange between two FREE individuals is the reason for the prosperity for the last 200 years. Read more

Published 10 months ago by Joey
5.0 out of 5 starsLoved the book

Loved the book. I noticed one of the reviews mentioned ed it was painful to read and that he could stop skimming through the pages. Well... Read more

Published 10 months ago by Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 starsThanks. Big Book.

Thanks.
Big Book.

Published 10 months ago by Tom Hibbs
5.0 out of 5 starsWealth creation

McCloskey is without peer in explaining creation of wealth and its importance to civilization.

Published 10 months ago by Tom Kirkendall
3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

The Author is unquestionably talented. So much so I got slogged by the first hundred pages. Heavy stuff bro.

Published 10 months ago by Snarky80
2.0 out of 5 starsTwo Stars

Half of what I expected, maybe I didn't get it

Published 16 months ago by Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 starsGreat Book but, Verbose, verbose, verbose.....

I liked her ideas, but reading the book was a painful experience for me. Way too many compound sentences and way to many references to her colleagues that would have been better... Read more

Published 19 months ago by Delavalle
5.0 out of 5 starsThis is an excellent book, well researched and well thought out

This is an excellent book, well researched and well thought out. Of particular interest is the evolution of philsophy, for that is what Ms. Read more

Published 19 months ago by j betts

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