In short, the entire book is flooded with a series of a priori (and general historical ignorance) that is only saved because, in the second part, at least comments certain anecdotal facts. True facts (in part), well known to historians (by the way). The thing is that, even here, they are a kind of puzzle that he makes fit as he wants within the utopian logic from which he started from the outset. 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 Gedurende het grootste gedeelte van de menselijke geschiedenis was er niet of nauwelijks (economische) groei. Verbeteringen in de technologie en productie werden al snel weer teniet gedaan door de groei van de bevolking die die veranderingen juist mogelijk hadden gemaakt. Het was Malthus die dit in zijn essay in 1798 beschreef en daarmee beweerde dat de wereld zich nooit uit deze 'Malthusian trap' zou bevrijden. I was pretty disappointed on the chapters on institutions and culture. There didn't seem to be a unified theory here, but rather a review of important papers (Acemoglu, Putnam etc.) which were a bit too familiar to the reader of comparative litterature. I get that this is a book with a huge scope (grand historical development), but I was simply a bit too bored when reading the description of various papers that got the label "growth". An inspiring, readable, jargon-free and almost impossibly erudite masterwork. ” — The New Statesman

A masterful sweep through the human odyssey…. If you liked Sapiens, you’ll love this. ”—Lewis Dartnell, author of Origins The second half of the book is about the rise of inequality between countries. He eschews any discussion of the growth theory of Solow, Lucas, Romer and the like and goes—which he briefly dismisses as “proximate”—and instead instead goes to the deeper, underlying theories: (1) institutions, (2) culture, (3) geography, and (4) population diversity. 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:A very good but perhaps not great book. Does a good job staying focused on the biggest of human stories, evolution, survival, growth, inequality and the future while remaining interesting throughout. Material gains driven by more people and a demand for more invention where cancelled out by more mouths to feed until an eqlibrium was established. The data does work consistently when combined with the timing of neolithic and agriculturial revolutions. I am in awe of Oded Galor’s attempts to explain inequality today as a consequence of such profound forces. A remarkable contribution to our understanding of this mammoth dilemma.” —Jim O’Neill, author of The Growth Map Not only a succinct, unified theory of economic growth since modern humans evolved, but also an engaging and optimistic answer to anyone who thinks that poverty and inequality will always be with us .”— Ian Morris, Stanford University’s Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor in Classics and author of The Measure of Civilization En toch ... hoe kan het zijn dat we de laatste paar eeuwen een nooit eerder vertoonde economische groei hebben doorgemaakt? Dat is de vraag die Oded Galor in dit boek centraal stelt. Wat zijn de oorzaken, en hoe hebben die er voor gezorgd dat we uit deze Malthusian trap zijn ontsnapt?

A wildly ambitious attempt to do for economics what Newton, Darwin or Einstein did for their fields: develop a theory that explains almost everything. ”— The New Statesman 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.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? Why did humanity get prosperous after hundreds of thousands of years of stagnation? And why do we observe such high levels of inequality between regions and countries today? These are the two main questions that Galor aims to answer in his Journey of Humanity. Oded Galor’sattempt to unify economic theory is impressive and insightful. ” —Will Hutton, The Guardian 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?

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.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 Although some compare this work with Sapiens (Harari) or Jared Diamond's already classic, the differences are immense. While the first proposed a macrocosmic vision of history in an informative but fresh way, and while the second knew how to combine different branches of knowledge with an innovative result, in this book we find none of that. Maybe it might be said that the bests sections of the book are those in which he copy/pastes some interesting (but very well known) facts about geography and history (some of them previously divulged by other popularizers before him, like Peter Watson or Diamond...) improvements since we walked out of Africa, yet not pet person until recently. Humanity was gripped in the Mathulsean poverty trap until recent centuries.