This was the perfect book to read in France. Extremely well-written essays on various aspects of France's history, culture, and economy, focussing on what makes France different from the US or Canada.
Each chapter builds on the thesis of why the French people accept extreme standardization and centralization of government in every aspect of life.
One of those books that wasn't what I expected. Wish I'd read it earlier.
Levitt is a renegade economist who looks at all kinds of social questions and analyzes the economics of them. The result is fascinating. In this book, he examines the economics of US crime rates, the US drug trade, the real estate trade, parenting, the naming of black and white (American) children, and sumo wrestling. He looks hard at the effect of incentives and the risk assessment abilities of the masses. The books is soaked in American issues, but still relevant to all of us. Levitt reviews the numbers behind all the conventional explanations, refutes them, and provides his own answers. I had of course either read about or realized myself many of these but he added a lot of detail and clarity to my thoughts.
A slim book, finished in a morning, but highly entertaining, certainly unique.
Another blockbuster by Diamond. He describes some major societies and why they collapsed or will collapse, including the Greenland Norse, the Mayans, Anasazi, China, and Haiti. He sites a set of factors but the crowning reason is abuse of the environment in every case. Underlying that is the decision by these societies to destroy their environment in the face of certain death. He says that their vision was as blurry as ours is now as we destroy our planet.
His detailed descriptions of the economies/environments of Easter Island, Rwanda, Australia, and others are riveting. He refutes the idea that the world can produce enough food using fertilizers to feed everyone (rendering economist Jeremy Sachs End of Poverty irrelevant).
He stunned me by stating that Australia can support a maximum of 8 million people (half what it has now) and should stop immigration immediately. He does not mention Canada, but I am sure he would say we are headed in the same direction.
In the last few chapters of the book, he describes examples of responsible development including a heartening description of Shell Oil's operations in New Guinea.
A
must read for anyone interested in our world.
Recommended by Loris. Started Feb. 4, 2010, finished Feb. 9, 2010. Must read for anyone interested in the world history, economics, environment, and social issues.
Really interesting and well organized, a mixture of common sense, startling statistics, and optimism. I found the chapters on the economic crises in Poland, China, etc. extremely enlightening (didn't pay attention at the time). He describes the roles of the IMF, World Bank and the US, who are the culprits in many cases.
Sachs defines three types of poverty and explains how nations can eliminate extreme poverty (life itself is precarious). 500 hundred years ago everybody was extremely poor, except for a tiny elite. At this time there are 1 billion extreme poor, less than 20% of the world's population, which has declined in the last two decade from 50%. Put this way, one can't help but have a good feeling that progress is being made quite rapidly.He explains in detail all the factors that lead to extreme poverty, including politics and disease and geography. He has a plan for eliminating "extreme" poverty that certainly sounds doable to this cynic. He debunks every possible excuse for not doing it. He is most harsh on the US for giving the smallest GDP percentage of foreign aid of all countries in the world (by far).
