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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1999) (edit title/settings)

Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

by David S. Landes (Author) (edit contributors)

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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,... read more

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  • “We assume that big business enterprises are rational and that rationality entails awareness. The annals of business make it clear, though, that much decision making is guesswork and improvisation. Otherwise, how do these enterprises manage to dig themselves so deep a hole?”
  • “Some things will never happen if one does not try to make them happen.”
  • “Just because something is obvious does not mean that people will see it, or that they will sacrifice belief to reality.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • This world is divided roughly into three kinds of nations: those that spend lots of money to keep their weight down; those whose people eat to live; and those whose people don’t know where the next meal is coming from.
    Highlighted by 42 Kindle customers
  • (All economic [industrial] revolutions have at their core an enhancement of the supply of energy, because this feeds and changes all aspects of human activity.)
    Highlighted by 37 Kindle customers
  • To begin with, the Chinese lacked range, focus, and above all, curiosity. They went to show themselves, not to see and learn; to bestow their presence, not to stay; to receive obeisance and tribute, not to buy.
    Highlighted by 33 Kindle customers
  • One final advantage of fragmentation: by decentralizing authority, it made Europe safe from single-stroke conquest.
    Highlighted by 31 Kindle customers
  • I would put forward a law of social and political relationships, namely, that three factors cannot coexist: (1) a marked disparity of power; (2) private access to the instruments of power; and (3) equality of groups or nations.
    Highlighted by 30 Kindle customers
  • One other fissure helped: the split between secular and religious. Unlike Islamic societies, where religion was in principle supreme and the ideal government that of the holy men, Christianity, craving imperial tolerance, early made the distinction between God and Caesar. To each his own.
    Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers
  • Our task (the rich countries), in our own interest as well as theirs, is to help the poor become healthier and wealthier. If we do not, they will seek to take what they cannot make; and if they cannot earn by exporting commodities, they will export people. In short, wealth is an irresistible magnet; and poverty is a potentially raging contaminant: it cannot be segregated, and our peace and prosperity depend in the long run on the well-being of others.
    Highlighted by 26 Kindle customers
  • Winter, then, in spite of what poets may say about it, is the great friend of humanity: the silent white killer, slayer of insects and parasites, cleanser of pests.
    Highlighted by 26 Kindle customers
  • Despotisms abounded in Europe, too, but they were mitigated by law, by territorial partition, and within states, by the division of power between the center (the crown) and local seigneurial authority.7 Fragmentation gave rise to competition, and competition favored good care of good subjects. Treat them badly, and they might go elsewhere.
    Highlighted by 24 Kindle customers
  • The contest for power in European societies (note the plural) also gave rise to the specifically European phenomenon of the semi-autonomous city, organized and known as commune.
    Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

Geography has fallen on hard times.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. David S. Landes (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Country: United States of America
Publication Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0393318885
Page Count: 658

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Classification edit see section history

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Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • The World Is Flat

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