From the preface: 'This is a book which synthesizes a lifetime of reflection on the origins of the modern world. Through forty years of travel in Europe, Austra

An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capital

By their very nature, inventions change the status quo. The innovations highlighted in this book have done so in a most dramatic, memorable, or effective fashio

The world’s principal measure of the health of economies is gross domestic product, or GDP: the sum of what all of us spend every day, from the contents of ou