It is tempting for a “unified theory” of the “journey of humanity” to try to provide the key to all mythologies, and the book becomes more speculative and dubious, suggesting that the economic performance of entire modern societies can be explained by a kind of cultural memory of their ancestors’ interactions with one kind of crop or animal versus another. Galor also proposes that languages with politeness distinctions ( tu and vous in French or du and Sie in German) have thereby enshrined more rigid hierarchies, and so harmed individual business enterprise. This reminded me pleasantly of the remark attributed to George W Bush: “The problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur.” The book’s desire to uncover the “great cogs” of history devolves into a kind of impersonal conspiracy thinking. A book of this nature relies on fortuitous reversals that might make sense ex post but how sure are we? For example, Europe’s geography led to many competition states and China’s to a single unified state, the later was better for the economy through 1500 but the former was better after. Yes, there’s a decent story. But am I sure? Of course not. The explanation of the takeoff into sustained growth is a little bit less satisfying, but that’s partly what happens when you only have one first sustained takeoff—and it happens at a time when the world is globally connected so you don’t have the (somewhat) independent data points you have for studying other issues. Galor argues was a situation where small changes can lead to a large change—which he analogizes to “bifurcation theory” in mathematics. For most of human history, we were caught in a stagnation trap. Improvements in technology and productivity led to population increases, and all those new people gobbled up the surplus, so that overall living standards always reverted to the historical average, barely above subsistence. Thomas Malthus, the unfairly maligned English clergyman, assumed this would always be the case. And yet, at least in the fortunate global north, things have been very different for the last century or so. How come?

In a captivating journey from the dawn of human existence to the present, world-renowned economist and thinker Oded Galor offers an intriguing solution to two of humanity’s great mysteries. Don't get us wrong. It is not that something in his approach to economic development is not true (although there are things that a historian would never accept), it is that the perspective is scientific, ahistorical, anti-philosophical, uncritical... It looks like political propaganda, politically correct...aiming at understanding the whole with broken toys. It explores how ancient factors like geography, culture and diversity impact today’s wealth inequality… Uses entertaining narratives to explain how this works.” — Forbes So far, so plausible. But, like a deep-time materialist, Galor is always looking to reduce the superstructure of ideas to something more tangible. Climate and geography, then, caused underlying differences in political systems: in places where native crops were suited to “large plantations”, such as Central America and the Caribbean, people were incentivised, so he argues, to adopt “centralised land ownership, which led to unequal wealth distribution, coerced labour and even slavery”. We may be thankful, then, for drizzly Europe.

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A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species ’progress, from one of the world’s preeminent thinkers. Galor’s project is breathtakingly ambitious. He proposes a fairly simple, intensely human-capital-oriented model that will accommodate the millennia of Malthusian near-stagnation, the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath of rapid growth, the accompanying demographic transition, and the emergence of modern human-capital-based growth. And the model is supposed to generate endogenously the transitions from one era to the next. The resulting book is a powerful mixture of fact, theory, and interpretation.”— Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate in Economics Galor’s policy argument instead is that “As the great cogs that have governed the journey of humanity continue to turn, measures that enhance future orientation, education and innovation, along with gender equality, pluralism and respect for difference, hold the key for universal prosperity.” It’s hard to argue with this—and most of these are good in their own right even if they’re not key to growth. Moreover most of them are actually emphasized by international institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (at least today). Astounding in scope and insight...provides the keys to the betterment of our species." -- Nouriel Roubini, author of Crisis Economics The Journey of Humanity takes on the huge task of explaining how humanity got to this point, which the author calls the Mystery of Growth. The second half explains why this growth has not been universal across nations, which the author calls the Mystery of Inequality.

A] sweeping overview of cultural, technological and educational forces…Its breadth and ambition are reminiscent of Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Harari’s Sapiens. ”— Financial Times In The Journey Of Humanity, Oded Galor argues that climate policy should not be restricted to cutting carbon but should also involve ‘pushing hard for gender equality, access to education and the availability of contraceptives, to drive forward the decline in fertility.’ India will do well to heed that advice.” —The New Indian Express Sweeping overview of cultural, technological, and educational forces that let countries break out of the poverty trap and become wealthy.Its breadth and ambition are reminiscent of Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steeland Harari’s Sapiens.”— Financial Times Fascinating book…Highly exciting journey through the economic history of mankind from the Stone Age to the present day.”— Frankfurter Allgemeine Furthermore, too many examples were a bit cliché - institutions seen in North and South Korea, trust seen in North and South Italy. I'm missing a bit more strange examples to give some new flavor to these classic topics.From the Malthusian (hunter-gatherer) epoch to the Neolithic (agricultural) Revolution to the Industrial Revolution and concluding now in the Technological Era, the book looks closely at what drives lifestyle improvements. Has the Demographic Transition, where families have less children due to the cost of training them in advanced skills, promoted prosperity? Did allowing non-native citizens to share in the nation’s wealth increase or decrease growth? Galor tells this big story while drawing on a range of recent academic research, much of it is his own but also Daron Acemoglu, Melissa Dell, and many other economists who are using modern empirical methods to exploit quasi natural experiments to study how (possibly) random differences in the past cast a shadow centuries or even millennia later. This thorough grounding in research sets it apart from some other more speculative big think books—although some of the research ends up confirming, or at least corroborating, various speculations. 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:

In many ways the evidence the book presents, drawing on a lot of peer-reviewed research, is much better than what we had even twenty years ago in thinking about economic growth. In other ways, however, a lot of the relationships between ancient variables and present ones (e.g., when was maize first introduced in Chinese areas and what was there economic status much later) could easily have alternative explanations or miss big points.

There is so much Oded Galor forgets or ignores... it all comes down to weak correlations! But, anyway, they look so PERFECT that people could believe this is the truth. Completely brilliant and utterly original … a book for our epoch. ”—Jon Snow, former presenter, Channel 4 News (UK) A masterful sweep through the human odyssey...if you liked Sapiens, you'll love this." -- Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins