Friday, November 6, 2020

Review of The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present by Kenneth Pomeranz, Steven C. Topik

This book review was written by Eugene Kernes

Book can be found in:
Genre = Economics, History
Intriguing Connections = 1) Get To Know The Peoples Of The World (World History), 2) How Products Shape and Change the World

Elaborate Description

This book presents various topics on how trade created the world as we know it. Many regions and peoples of the world are represented, their interconnections and interdependencies, provide different cultures of trade are exquisite. Commodities change their local identity when they begin to be traded by various peoples. Trade created new opportunities and demands, but also changed the fates. New and old sources of ingenuity become used differently in other cultures.

The book is organized not by the timeline of history, but by sections such as transportation, violence, and commodities. Each section has various short examples on different aspects that represent that topic. The authors wrote the pages with eloquence. Rather then just explain what happened, the success of the book is in targeting the lessons to be learned from the particular trade aspect.

One of the problems of the book is that it is written in a more deterministic style. The conclusion to the book represented the volatility of events that shape the various potential futures, but the historic examples provided are more linear.


Book Details

Edition ISBN:  9780765623553
Pages to read:   307
Publication:     2012
1st Edition:      1999
Format:            Paperback

Ratings out of 5:
Readability    5
Content          5
Overall           5