The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So PoorNew York Times Bestseller The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes's acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance. Rich with anecdotal evidence, piercing analysis, and a truly astonishing range of erudition, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is a "picture of enormous sweep and brilliant insight" (Kenneth Arrow) as well as one of the most audaciously ambitious works of history in decades. |
From inside the book
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... and more than doubled it if one takes into account the value of experience.5 3. The mechanical clock . Another banality , so commonplace that we take it for granted . Yet Lewis Mumford quite correctly THE INVENTION OF INVENTION 47.
... clocks . Sun clocks worked of course only on clear days ; water clocks misbehaved when the temperature fell toward freezing , to say nothing of long - run drift as a result of sedi- mentation and clogging . Both of these devices served ...
... clock kept equal hours , and this implied a new time reckoning . The Church resisted , not coming over to the new hours ... clocks installed in the towers and belfries of town halls and market . squares became the very symbol of a new ...
... clocks , or more accurately , their rulers and elites did ; but none could make them to Eu- ropean standard . The Chinese built a few astronomical water clocks in the Tang and Sung eras - complicated and artful pieces that may have kept ...
... clocks and watches , doing their best to acquire them by purchase or tribute . But they never used them to cre- ate a public sense of time other than as a call to prayer . We have the tes- timony here of Ghiselin de Busbecq , ambassador ...
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
29 | |
45 | |
60 | |
Eastward Ho | 79 |
From Discoveries to Empire | 99 |
Bittersweet Isles | 113 |
The Wealth of Knowledge | 276 |
Frontiers | 292 |
The South American Way | 310 |
Stasis and Retreat | 335 |
And the Last Shall Be First | 350 |
The Meiji Restoration | 371 |
History Gone Wrong? | 392 |
Empire and After | 422 |
Empire in the East | 125 |
For Love of Gain | 137 |
Golconda | 150 |
The Balance Sheet of Empire | 168 |
The Nature of Industrial Revolution | 186 |
Why Europe? Why Then? | 200 |
Britain and the Others | 213 |
Pursuit of Albion | 231 |
You Need Money to Make Money | 256 |
Loss of Leadership | 442 |
Winners and | 465 |
Losers | 491 |
How Did We Get Here? Where Are We Going? | 512 |
EPILOGUE 1999 | 525 |
NOTES | 533 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 575 |
INDEX | 645 |