So Poor . W.W. Norton, 1998. Reviewed for EH.NET by J. Bradford De Long, Department of Economics, University of California-Berkeley. David Landes has studied the history of economic development for more than half a century.
Landes makes no compromises with any current fashion.
Nevertheless, Landes's economic history is a profoundly Eurocentric history. Now Landes does not think that all history should be Eurocentric. But a history oriented toward understanding the wealth and poverty of nations today must be Eurocentric. And by and large it is these same factors that have made it so damn difficult since the Industrial Revolution for people elsewhere to acquire the modern machine technologies and modes of social and economic organization found in the world economy's industrial core. I am not sure about this part of his argument.