Civilization: The West and the Rest

Why it’s on the list: Niall Ferguson asks why a handful of western European states came to dominate the world after 1500 and answers with six “killer applications” — competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic — then makes the uncomfortable point that they are downloadable, the rest of the world has been downloading them, and the West may be losing the confidence that built them.

Where I heard about it

• Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, in the deep-history section, as the institutional answer to the question Morris answers with an index and Diamond with geography. He cites the Penguin 2012 paperback.

Connections

• Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the list this came from.
• Li Lu — the Himalaya Capital founder who assembled it.
• Niall Ferguson — the author.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel — the geographic explanation Ferguson’s institutional one competes with, also in section I.
• The Wealth and Poverty of Nations — Landes on the same divergence, which Li Lu lists in his value-investing section instead.