Una cultura della crescita. Le origini dell'economia moderna

Hadrian's review ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ) does the book far more justice than I can, so just some brief thoughts. Joel Mokyr reminds us that the British Industrial Revolution from the late 18th Century "unleashed an phenomenon never before even remotely experienced by any society," Leggi tutto

Few questions are more important in economic history than the origins of the Great Divergence: why did the Industrial Revolution start in, of all places, Europe (and Great Brittain, to be more precise) in the second half of the 18th century, to set off the first period of sustained economic growth p Leggi tutto

Very interesting thesis (in need of an editor) This is ultimately a 100-page book that somehow ended up as 300 pages. Mokyr sets out his stall well, although I think the list of biases he tells on when discussing the transfer of knowledge is perhaps too loose to be useful. He also finishes the book

Outstanding history of the Enlightenment and its impact on Europe. I found the insights about the Republic of Letters particularly valuable.

This book sits at such a precise intersection of things I've been interested in for so long that I still can't quite believe I only happened across it by chance, in a random general "economic history" recs twitter thread. I remember a moment in my freshman dorm room, speculating naively over a yawni Leggi tutto

Focusing on the years from 1500-1700, Mokyr traces the influences foreshadowing the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. One crucial key was the writings of Francis Bacon, whose explanation of how knowledge can be discovered through close observation of nature and by conducting experiments t Leggi tutto

Mokyr’s text feels like it was published a generation ago and represents the very worst academic prose. His main contention that “nations and economies grow...because they increase their collective knowledge about nature” might have passed as an intellectually significant contribution to the discipl Leggi tutto

Joel Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth doesn’t read like history. As a study into the conditions of Europe from 1500-1700, Mokyr utilizes a cultural and economic model in production of an intellectual history to assert his principal claim: European culture was responsible for the snowballing technological Leggi tutto

First off, whoever designed this book needed to increase the font size a point or two. I’m getting older, but not that much older. In terms of the book, Mokyr does string a nice thread from Bacon to the Enlightenment as the source of the eternal question of why the industrial revolution happened whe Leggi tutto

A thorough look at why the Industrial Revolution started Europe in the 1700-1800s. Dense and well researched. If you are asking why did the world go from living on meager incomes for most of history and then suddenly everyone became richer? then this book helps provide a the cultural answer to that