The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

I had problems with this book. I drowned under Uberprofessor Landes' unceasing high-pressure hosepipe of facts and robust opinion like I was a stubborn fire he was trying to put out. Okay, I’m out. And feeling soggy too. Is there anything, anywhere, you don’t know or can’t fit into your book, Profes......more

Read this book in one stint during a stay at the sea. It appealed to me on a very fundamental, nerdy level as it went deep into historic details, uprooting information that was new to me. The reader spends equal time in the main text as in the footnotes - while being challenged and entertained. 'Guns......more

David Landes is trying to answer a similar question to that posed by Jared Diamond: Why are some countries so rich and other countries so poor? Landes comes to a much more complex answer than Diamond, and because of that I find his explanations somewhat more plausible. Landes concludes that prosperi......more

#Preparatory books for another Degree: David S. Landes’s The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is a comprehensive, go-getting, and punctiliously researched exploration of the factors that have fashioned the economic inequalities among nations over the past 500 years. Landes, a historian with a flair for......more