If I were fully to express my admiration for this book, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor, this review would run on endlessly for pages and pages, acres and acres.
I read the book from cover to cover; then, as soon as I got to the end, I went back to the beginning and chewed through it a second time. My teen-age son, seeing all the marginal notes, wondered what I was up to, and his twin sister asked if I were studying for a quiz. The author takes you on a spectacular trip all over the world, digging into the birth of industrialism starting with water and wind power, then going into the clocks, files, tools, watches, math, looms and finally bursting forth into the steel making and manufacturing that brought wealth and power to Britain, the west in general and the USA in particular. What was thrilling about all this was the nitty gritty detail he goes into for each exploration, and I could just see him down on his hands and knees looking at the underside of a spinning jenny to see how it worked. Probably tried throwing the shuttle, too, or even making cloth. And when he was standing "inside the womb of the Industrial Revolution," I could actually see the pitted, baked bricks of that abandoned blast furnace, now a tourist museum in Coalbrooksdale. He really gets into things and that's what gives the history its punch. All the lessons can be taken to the abstract precisely because so much of the work is concrete and easy to read, which is probably why a lot of academicians don't like it.
Through his powerful lens I see, alas, what we have lost and continue to lose. We seem to be going the way of 16th & 17th C. Spain, buying the goods of others and forgetting how to make anything ourselves. I read smug economists who actually believe we are getting the best of China by trading our green paper money for goods made in China -- while ignoring the fact that when we put Americans out of work they lose their valuable skills, which then go to the Chinese who not only accumulate money but what is even more dangerous they learn our technologies quickly and at no cost to themselves. Can it ever be wise to enrich and arm a large potential enemy? I consider them an enemy not so much because they call themselves Communists, but because their aggressive form of totalitarian capitalism is pure Fascism. This is the state Mussolini had in mind but failed to pull off.
This book contains not only lessons but solutions to anyone who wants to see them. It should be required reading for every political candidate from dog catcher to President.
I salute the author for a job well done.
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Top reviews from other countries
- Robert GoldinReviewed in Canada on October 14, 2024
A classic and definitive work by a renowned Economic historian.
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E.S.M.Reviewed in Brazil on May 31, 2020
Excelente para entender as desigualdades dos países
- Peter TillemansReviewed in Germany on December 31, 2020
My son was very enthusiastic receiving it
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