The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

David S. Landes

May 1999 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

New York Times Bestseller

"Readers cannot but be provoked and stimulated by this splendidly iconoclastic and refreshing book." —Andrew Porter, New York Times Book Review

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes's acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance. Rich with anecdotal evidence, piercing analysis, and a truly astonishing range of erudition, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is a "picture of enormous sweep and brilliant insight" (Kenneth Arrow) as well as one of the most audaciously ambitious works of history in decades.

Ratings and reviews

A great book that takes a broad look at the successful and unsuccessful countries/regions of the world over the last 700 years or so. While this was not a difficult read, it was not a really engaging read either, it is simply loaded with just too much information to be a real page-turner. However, one learns a lot. The book suffered a little bit I think from very poor editing, there were many mistakes that a simple spell check would have caught, sometimes I had to re-read a simple sentence (you will expand your SAT or GRE vocab in this book for sure) & figure out the missing word. Landes is not afraid to unapologetically say that the West (Europe) has done the best and it is largely because of culture. This book was a refreshing bit of realism & he really takes on those who would nay-say the West's technological & prosperity leadership, or who would try to say it is all just an accident. He does highlight those few non-Western countries that have done well recently, and we can see those even more so (like Korea) now, 12 years after this was published. He also shows how some of the losers in Europe went down the wrong path, so there is again, realistic balance.

About the author

David S. Landes (1924—2013) was professor emeritus at Harvard University and the author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Bankers and Pashas, The Unbound Prometheus, and Revolution in Time.