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The Riddle of the Modern World: Of Liberty, Wealth and Equality
 
 
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The Riddle of the Modern World: Of Liberty, Wealth and Equality (Paperback)

by Alan Macfarlane (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 340 pages
  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; New edition edition (5 Dec 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0333984501
  • ISBN-13: 978-0333984505
  • Product Dimensions: 21.5 x 14.1 x 2.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 990,725 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

What conditions the chances of liberty, wealth and equality at the start of the third Christian millennium? Why did human civilizations develop so slowly for thousands of years, and then transform themselves during the last 300? This study of four great thinkers who lived between 1689 and 1995, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, De Tocqueville, and Ernest Gellner, weaves their lives and works together and through their own words shows how they approached the question of the nature of man, his past and his future.


About the Author

ALAN MACFARLANE is Professor of Anthropological Science at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1986. His previous books include Marriage and Love in England 1300-1840 (1986), The Culture of Capitalism (1987), The Savage Wars of Peace (1997) .
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Rather too much an ambitious work for so scarce results., 3 Mar 2002
By Cesar Gonzalez Rouco (Madrid, Madrid Spain) - See all my reviews
If you wish to have a good summary of certain aspects (i.e., the interactions and relations between liberty, wealth and equality) of three great thinkers (Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Tocqueville; Ernst Gellner is also treated but not to much in depth, really), this book is interesting. But not at all enough to cope with its ambitious aims: i) to explain the obstacles which had halted the growth of all great agrarian civilizations up to the18th century ; and ii) to try and explain what has happened since the 18th century. By the end of the book, the author recognizes that "there is still a large gap in the explanation of how the transition to the modern world has occurred" and that there is still pending an explanation of the technological and scientific growth in western Europe between the 12th-19th centuries and why, during the same period, it slowed down, ceased and even partially regressed in other civilizations which had previously been far more advanced than Europe. As of today, nobody has a definitive answer to this, but I would suggest to read the following books: "The Rise of the West" by William H. McNeill, "World History. A new perspective" by Clive Ponting, "Reorient" by Andre Gunder Frank, "The Great Divergence", by Kenneth Pomeranz, "The Dynamics of Global Dominance. European Overseas Empires 1415-1980", by David Abernethy and "The Cash Nexus" by Niall Ferguson.
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