As Time Goes By

Review from previous edition This major contribution to economic history is the most impressive and convincing attempt I know to apply the concept of the 'long waves', a basic rhythm of historical development in the era of capitalism, to the entire stretch from eighteenth-century Lancashire to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley. It is also a call for economic history to escape from the handcuffs of narrow retrospective econometrics to the freedom of its vocation: understanding and explaining secular historical transformations. * Eric Hobsbawm FBA, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Emeritus Professor of Social and Economic History, Birkbeck College; Author of The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 *
. . . a true story has to make sense, to be plausible and persuasive. Cleverness is less useful than sense and sensibility. The inability to see this, to avoid showing off, has been the death of more than one pyrotechnic schema. This book is testimony to knowledge and good sense. Such virtues are rare and that much more valuable. * David Landes, Professor of History and Economics, Harvard University, Emeritus; Author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations *
This book is a thought-provoking work that is valuable for more than its detailed account of the technological revolutions that shape our economy today. By directing our attention to a perspective outside the current wave, it shapes our thinking about events inside the current wave. * Academy of Management Review, 27(2) *