How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation Of The Industrial World 1st Edition

by Nathan Rosenberg (Author), L. E.. Birdzell (Author)

12 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0465031092

ISBN-10: 0465031099

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How did the West—Europe, Canada, and the United States—escape from immemorial poverty into sustained economic growth and material well-being when other societies remained trapped in an endless cycle of birth, hunger, hardship, and death? In this elegant synthesis of economic history, two scholars argue that it is the political pluralism and the flexibility of the West's institutions—not corporate organization and mass production technology—that explain its unparalleled wealth.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

In this elegant synthesis of economic history, two scholars argue that it is the political pluralism and the flexibility of the West's institutions, not corporate organization and mass production technology-that explain its unparalleled wealth.

About the Author

Nathan Rosenberg, a leading expert on the history of technology, is an economist at Stanford University.

L.E. Birdzell, Jr. is an attorney and legal scholar, based in Newport, Rhode Island.

Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (June 1, 1987)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0465031099
ISBN-13: 978-0465031092
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 12 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #966,564 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2684 in Books > Business & Money > Biography & History > Economic History
- #2875 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Economic Conditions
- #5883 in Books > Textbooks > Business & Finance > Economics

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Roger

The Best Explanation Yet

March 12, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I have read every book and article I can find on what I will call the Modern Breakthrough -- from a destitute, illiterate, unhealthy Malthusian world of pretty much every place for all time, to the modern world of relative prosperity, health, freedom and knowledge. This book is probably the single best summary of the factors which were necessary to the breakthrough, or series of breakthroughs (they actually mention at least five -- the expansion of trading and markets, the first and second industrial revolution, the modern information/technology revolution, and science).

I will allow, no encourage, everyone to read the book themselves for the details, but the basic concept is that what was different in Western Europe from other times and places was decentralized authority and decision making. Problem solving necessary for the advancement of the human condition is a cooperative affair, but cooperation can emerge both top down (via hierarchy and control) and bottoms up in a decentralized, diverse way. The West blossomed by allowing more of the latter to emerge than in other societies controlled by custom, bureaucracy, despotism, the status quo, and guilds.

The West, concentrated first in Britain and later much broader, first and foremost did less to stop innovation. Just as dramatically, it created (greatly without conscious intent) institutions which actually required or demanded innovation, experimentation, incremental improvement, efficiency and organizational adaptiveness. The book is about the details illustrating this unique situation. How it evolved. Why it evolved. Why it was so different.

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Kyle Bennett

5-star content, 2-star production.

March 27, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I'm only a third of the way through but I have to jump in after finding a bizarre production error.

But first, the content is top notch. It explores a period of history, the rise of capitalism out of the decline of fuedalism/manorialism that I'd only really known about in one-sentence soundbytes and brief fragments. The writing is precise, detailed, and thus dry, but it manages to not bog. It makes a good attempt at balance and to support its intermediate conclusions, but still retains a specific point of view. Most importantly, it has provided me already with pieces of a historical puzzle that puts the modern situation in a light I had not considered.

Now to the production. Overall, it is well put together. But somehow pages 109-114 and 115-120 have been transposed. So after finishing page 108 in mid-sentence, you have to skip ahead six pages to find 109, read six pages, jump back to where 115 comes immediately after 109, read six pages, then jump ahead again to continue the rest of the book. That's an incredibly sloppy mistake that I've never encountered before. I can't really take any stars off for it, because everything is there and it can be read, and it does not diminish from the content. But if I was one of the authors, I'd be appalled by it.

(Refers to the Basic Books paperback edition)

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David S. Smith

Four Stars

September 17, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Bernie Sanders should read this.

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Barry E Magee

is a good friend. Strongly suggested reading for any of you ...

March 9, 2015

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The author, now 98 years young and as sharp as a razor, is a good friend. Strongly suggested reading for any of you financial guru wannabes out there.

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Juan C.

How the West Grew Rich

September 25, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Excelent analysis of how to create wealth. The book provides a very realistic theoretical framework of how wealth can be created in any place of the world.

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Zeljko Sablic

Good but...

June 25, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Very comprehensive, but hard to read book. Not for an average reader in search for simple and short explanation. It took me three months to read it through!

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Pretend PersonTop Contributor: Philosophy

Where Women are in Chains, Men are not Free

March 5, 2017

Format: Paperback

This review is not an ideological diatribe. This review is only an offering of an additional answer to the question of how the West grew rich. Such a broad and sweeping question invites a plurality of answers and I make this contribution in addition to, not in place of, the answers offered by the authors.

Marx was certainly mistaken in his claim that the fundamental social forces that led to development of free market economic thinking were purely changes in technology and the material modes of production. Max Weber tells us that the rational modern economic thinking emerged in the West can be dated to a sequence of events that took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. But still, something is missing.

Surely the legal right of women to hold a dispose of property had something to do with the freeing up of land titles from kindred obligations and thus the promotion of free exchange. Dating back to the high Middle Ages, English women at least had the independent right to hold and freely dispose of real estate and chattels. Women also had a greater participation in public events than women elsewhere in the world or in the historical experience. This added opportunity for half the population to engage in independent exchange and must have had some level of causality in the development and promotion of free exchange as an organizing principle of economic and social organization and thus the creation of material wealth in the West. Why did women gain this level of autonomy in the West? This was a social and cultural change, not a mandated legal change. These social and cultural changes were made possible, in part by Christian doctrine and in part by Catholic Church self-interest. The Church changed many of the traditional and tribal customs with regard to marriage and inheritance for its own purposes based in its view of salvation at the Individual level of each worshiper that led to a more individualistic mindset that in turn resulted in the increased ownership of land the ability to dispose of land by women as individuals. Christian doctrine mandated the universal equality of all human beings under God which made it much easier to accept women as property owners. This redounded to the innumerable advantage of the West in the creation of wealth as the population of economic actors doubled. However, the Church was not advocating female empowerment. It was only looking for a way of wresting control over valuable land and resources from powerful noble families.

Thus, capitalism was not the cause, as Marx would have it, but the result of deeper social changes concerning relationships and customs. Ultimately, I believe Weber was more correct with his insight into the impact of religion on politics, economics and the creation of wealth and thus separation of the West from all the rest but with this twist, Christianity inadvertently free up the female population to participate in economic activity.

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