Still, the public has a powerful and understandable appetite for theories that seem to explain it all, and so they keep on coming. Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History has already generated considerable buzz. Indeed, Fischer is getting favorable mention from people who tell us in the next breath that we live in a New Economy to which old rules no longer apply. Fischer's book looks promising on the face of it.
Inflation is a plausible candidate for a far-ranging search for parallels and common principles.
It is therefore a shame that the book turns out, in the end, to be quite wrong-headed. Well, the two familiar ones are both generally attributed to increases in the supply of money, but with those increases themselves driven by very different factors. Fischer regards such explanations as inadequate. This thesis is both fun to contemplate and comforting in its implication that the worst may already be behind us. An illuminating example involves his discussion of the origins of the great price rise after 1500.