The Journey of Humanity
And the Keys to Human Progress
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- 9,49 €
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- 9,49 €
Publisher Description
This breakthrough scientific masterwork - and INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - reveals the underlying forces that have shaped human history and will secure our future...
'Masterful. Galor answers the ultimate mystery' Lewis Dartnell
The stunning advances that have transformed human experience in recent centuries are no accident of history - they are the result of universal and timeless forces, operating since the dawn of our species. Drawing on a lifetime's scientific investigation, Oded Galor's ground-breaking new vision overturns a host of long-held assumptions to reveal the deeper causes that have shaped the journey of humanity:
Education rather than industrialisation
Family size and gender equality as much as inventions and technology
Geography and diversity rather than wars, disease and famine
'Unparalleled in its scope and ambition . . . All readers will learn something' Washington Post
'An inspiring, readable, jargon-free and almost impossibly erudite masterwork' New Statesman
'His optimism about humanity shines through' Observer
'If you need an evidence-based antidote to doomscrolling, here it is' Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The deep forces underlying human advancement are limned in this probing study of economic development. Brown University economist Galor (Discrete Dynamical Systems) proposes a "unified growth theory" to explain how countries escaped from an age-old Malthusian cycle, in which fitful technological advancements promoted higher birth rates and then overpopulation and a retreat in living standards to dire poverty, to the modern regime of rapid, permanent improvements in technology, wealth, and health. He argues that the sluggish premodern growth of population and technology sparked a "phase transition" to the Industrial Revolution, creating a demand for skilled labor that led parents to have fewer children and spend more on their education, which in turn stimulated more innovation and growth in a virtuous circle. Exploring the roots of present-day economic inequalities between countries, Galor chalks them up to better or worse political institutions and environmental conditions, as well as the presence of "future-oriented mindsets" of hard work and thrift, and a society's level (moderate, ideally) of ethnic diversity. In lucid, accessible prose, Galor ingeniously traces obscure influences over centuries, contending, for instance, that areas close to Martin Luther's headquarters of Wittenberg, Germany, have higher modern-day educational attainment because of the early Protestant emphasis on Bible-reading. This engrossing history reveals that subtle causes can have astounding effects.
