How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier
by Joe Studwell · 6 Dec 2025 · 393pp · 148,223 words
decade, as fertiliser use expanded and was complemented by a bigger extension network of DAs and the construction of rural roads that facilitated trade in agricultural surpluses. None the less, historically famine-prone Ethiopia was already changing in the first decade of EPRDF rule. In 1972–4, drought and a famine took
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terms of farm production, the rise of medium-scale farms had two, contradictory effects. On the one hand, medium-scale farmers became important traders of agricultural surpluses. In the decade to 2015, the share of marketed crops from such farms in Zambia rose from 23 per cent to 42 per cent. In
Let them eat junk: how capitalism creates hunger and obesity
by Robert Albritton · 31 Mar 2009 · 273pp · 93,419 words
easily amount to over 50 percent of a farmer’s income in the case of large industrial farms. It was a policy that encouraged evergreater agricultural surpluses, many of which were dumped in developing countries at below costs of production. Although the food and agriculture sector saw dramatic developments due to petroleum
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of Agriculture from 1971 to 1976 under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Prior to Butz’s reforms the principal policy emphasis in dealing with the perennial agricultural surpluses was on various efforts to reduce supply, such as paying farmers to let some fields lie fallow. However, after Butz’s reforms, farmers received subsidies
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to also think about practices that we need to get rid of. One of these is state subsidies that enable rich countries to sell their agricultural surpluses at below costs of production, thus undermining agriculture in developing countries. Indeed, all “dumping” of agricultural products on international markets at below costs of production
The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality From the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
by Walter Scheidel · 17 Jan 2017 · 775pp · 208,604 words
isolation, the fact that taxes were set based on fixed assumptions about output prevented the “300 lords” who held large domains from capturing the expanding agricultural surplus, causing their share in overall revenues to fall. It took Japan’s opening to the global economy and its subsequent industrialization to push inequality to
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after political instability commenced in the mid-eighth century CE. The growth of large estates sheltered peasants from state taxation, allowing landlords to convert the agricultural surplus into private rent. Linked to long-distance trade, these commercialized estates helped sustain an increasingly rich elite. Those who disposed of sufficient capital to run
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
by David Graeber and David Wengrow · 18 Oct 2021
– according to Diamond and Fukuyama – is inevitable once humans adopt large, complex forms of organization. Even when the new leaders began acting badly – creaming off agricultural surplus to promote their flunkies and relatives, making status permanent and hereditary, collecting trophy skulls and harems of slave-girls, or tearing out rivals’ hearts with
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functions of government – military, administrative and judicial – pass into the hands of full-time specialists. This makes sense if you accept the narrative that an agricultural surplus ‘freed up’ a significant portion of the population from the onerous responsibility of securing adequate amounts of food: a story that suggests the beginning of
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any sort of ongoing village or town life.19 Monumental architecture on the scale of the Hopewell earthworks is generally assumed to imply a significant agricultural surplus, governed by chiefs or a stratum of religious leaders. Yet this isn’t what was going on. Rather we find just the sort of ‘play
Water: A Biography
by Giulio Boccaletti · 13 Sep 2021 · 485pp · 133,655 words
and land, determined by each society’s comparative advantage, partly defined by rainfall. If trade was predicated on the ability of some countries to generate agricultural surplus, it stands to reason that such trade could also be vulnerable to long-term changes in water conditions. Less rain in one corner of the
Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing
by Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd and Laurie Macfarlane · 28 Feb 2017 · 346pp · 90,371 words
school of economic thought, mercantilism, for its focus on trade and exchange, instead arguing that the source of true value and profit lay in the agricultural surplus. Seeing land as the source of all surplus, they proposed that the French government should obtain all of its revenue by taxing land, rather than
An Edible History of Humanity
by Tom Standage · 30 Jun 2009 · 282pp · 82,107 words
the portion of it they did not consume themselves. How did these powerful leaders emerge, and how did they end up in control of the agricultural surplus? An important step along the road from an egalitarian village to a stratified city seems to be the emergence of “big men” who win control
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emergence of complex civilizations than irrigation, though it seems to have played a role in some cases. Another theory suggests that the communal storage of agricultural surpluses might provide the leader with an opportunity to establish greater control over his followers. Villagers hand over surplus grain to the big man in anticipation
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redistributed as wages and rations to support the elite’s activities: building, administration, warfare, and so on. The principle that some or all of the agricultural surplus had to be handed over is common to all early civilizations, since the appropriation of the surplus had been central to their emergence in the
Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time
by James Suzman · 2 Sep 2020 · 909pp · 130,170 words
to Rome. Some of this wealth took the form of gold, silver, minerals, textiles and luxury items. But mostly it took the form of the agricultural surpluses and other food. As a result, the million or so people living in the capital, as well as the major provincial towns, happily consumed olives
Cadillac Desert
by Marc Reisner · 1 Jan 1986 · 898pp · 253,177 words
could easily have refused to supply new water to a region until it could demonstrate that its crop patterns would not make the nation’s agricultural surpluses worse, but its response, under Dominy, was to launch a belligerent campaign to deny that the problem existed. When Dominy appeared not to realize was
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict From 1500 to 2000
by Paul Kennedy · 15 Jan 1989 · 1,477pp · 311,310 words
of urban workers for foodstuffs and essential goods was soon to be met by a steam-driven communications revolution, with railways and steamships bringing the agricultural surpluses of the New World to satisfy the requirements of the Old. We can grasp this point in a different way by using Professor Landes’s
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carried out; and in the supply of foodstuffs. This last-named category seems a curious defect in a country which in peacetime always produced an agricultural surplus; but the fact was that the French, like the other European belligerents (except Britain), hurt their own agriculture by taking too many men from the
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only was it closer to, and better connected by road and rail with, the eastern European market, but it could readily absorb the area’s agricultural surpluses in the way that farm-surplus France and imperial-preference Britain could not, offering in return for Hungarian wheat and Rumanian oil much-needed machinery
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competitors of the United States. These two trends are separate from, but have coincided with, the transformation of the EEC into a major producer of agricultural surpluses, because of its price-support system. In consequence, experts now refer to a “world awash in food,” 233 which in turn leads to sharp declines
Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines
by Richard Heinberg and James Howard (frw) Kunstler · 1 Sep 2007 · 235pp · 65,885 words
Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy
by Francis Fukuyama · 29 Sep 2014 · 828pp · 232,188 words
The Locavore's Dilemma
by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu · 29 May 2012 · 329pp · 85,471 words
The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis
by Jeremy Rifkin · 31 Dec 2009 · 879pp · 233,093 words
The Life and Death of Ancient Cities: A Natural History
by Greg Woolf · 14 May 2020
Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves
by Nicola Twilley · 24 Jun 2024 · 428pp · 125,388 words
The Taste of War: World War Two and the Battle for Food
by Lizzie Collingham · 1 Jan 2011 · 927pp · 236,812 words
Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and Its Place in Western Civilization
by Paul Kindstedt · 31 Mar 2012 · 297pp · 89,176 words
When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of the Middle Kingdom
by Martin Jacques · 12 Nov 2009 · 859pp · 204,092 words
How Asia Works
by Joe Studwell · 1 Jul 2013 · 868pp · 147,152 words
The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policy Making in US History
by Derek S. Hoff · 30 May 2012
Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto
by Stewart Brand · 15 Mar 2009 · 422pp · 113,525 words
The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch
by Lewis Dartnell · 15 Apr 2014 · 398pp · 100,679 words
City: Urbanism and Its End
by Douglas W. Rae · 15 Jan 2003 · 537pp · 200,923 words
The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times
by Giovanni Arrighi · 15 Mar 2010 · 7,371pp · 186,208 words
The Cigarette: A Political History
by Sarah Milov · 1 Oct 2019
The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World―and Globalization Began
by Valerie Hansen · 13 Apr 2020
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore · 16 Oct 2017 · 335pp · 89,924 words
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson · 15 May 2023 · 619pp · 177,548 words
Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
by Charles Eisenstein · 11 Jul 2011 · 448pp · 142,946 words
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
by Matt Ridley · 17 May 2010 · 462pp · 150,129 words
Africa: A Biography of the Continent
by John Reader · 5 Nov 1998 · 1,072pp · 297,437 words
Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol
by Iain Gately · 30 Jun 2008 · 686pp · 201,972 words
The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning
by Jeremy Lent · 22 May 2017 · 789pp · 207,744 words
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
by David W. Anthony · 26 Jul 2010 · 658pp · 195,182 words
The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources
by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy · 25 Feb 2021 · 565pp · 134,138 words
Open: The Story of Human Progress
by Johan Norberg · 14 Sep 2020 · 505pp · 138,917 words
Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities
by Vaclav Smil · 23 Sep 2019
After the Cataclysm
by Noam Chomsky · 17 Dec 2014
In Defense of Global Capitalism
by Johan Norberg · 1 Jan 2001 · 233pp · 75,712 words
Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
by Robert W. McChesney · 5 Mar 2013 · 476pp · 125,219 words
Age of the City: Why Our Future Will Be Won or Lost Together
by Ian Goldin and Tom Lee-Devlin · 21 Jun 2023 · 248pp · 73,689 words
The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity
by Tim Wu · 4 Nov 2025 · 246pp · 65,143 words
A People's History of the United States
by Howard Zinn · 2 Jan 1977 · 913pp · 299,770 words
Adam Smith: Father of Economics
by Jesse Norman · 30 Jun 2018
The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
by Andrés Reséndez · 11 Apr 2016 · 532pp · 162,509 words
Ten Technologies to Save the Planet: Energy Options for a Low-Carbon Future
by Chris Goodall · 1 Jan 2010 · 297pp · 95,518 words
A Concise History of Modern India (Cambridge Concise Histories)
by Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf · 27 Sep 2006
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
by Edward E. Baptist · 24 Oct 2016
The Rough Guide to Sri Lanka
by Rough Guides · 21 Sep 2018
China: A History
by John Keay · 5 Oct 2009
Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
by J. Bradford Delong · 6 Apr 2020 · 593pp · 183,240 words
The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution
by Charles R. Morris · 1 Jan 2012 · 456pp · 123,534 words
The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class
by Kees Van der Pijl · 2 Jun 2014 · 572pp · 134,335 words
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
by Rick Perlstein · 1 Jan 2008 · 1,351pp · 404,177 words
A History of the World in 6 Glasses
by Tom Standage · 1 Jan 2005 · 231pp · 72,656 words
The City: A Global History
by Joel Kotkin · 1 Jan 2005
Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain
by John Darwin · 12 Feb 2013
Supertall: How the World's Tallest Buildings Are Reshaping Our Cities and Our Lives
by Stefan Al · 11 Apr 2022 · 300pp · 81,293 words
A Pipeline Runs Through It: The Story of Oil From Ancient Times to the First World War
by Keith Fisher · 3 Aug 2022
Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India
by Shashi Tharoor · 1 Feb 2018 · 370pp · 111,129 words
Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace
by Matthew C. Klein · 18 May 2020 · 339pp · 95,270 words
Future Shock
by Alvin Toffler · 1 Jun 1984 · 286pp · 94,017 words
Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World
by Andrew Lambert · 1 Oct 2018 · 618pp · 160,006 words
The Einstein of Money: The Life and Timeless Financial Wisdom of Benjamin Graham
by Joe Carlen · 14 Apr 2012 · 398pp · 111,333 words
On Thermonuclear War
by Herman Kahn · 16 Jul 2007 · 1,117pp · 270,127 words
The Wars of Afghanistan
by Peter Tomsen · 30 May 2011 · 1,118pp · 309,029 words
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
by George Friedman · 30 Jul 2008 · 278pp · 88,711 words
Venice: A New History
by Thomas F. Madden · 24 Oct 2012 · 466pp · 146,982 words
The Rough Guide to Jamaica
by Thomas, Polly,Henzell, Laura.,Coates, Rob.,Vaitilingam, Adam.
Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization
by Tim Queeney · 11 Aug 2025 · 264pp · 88,907 words
City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age
by P. D. Smith · 19 Jun 2012
The Myth of the Blitz
by Angus Calder · 28 Jun 2012 · 434pp · 127,608 words
The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam
by Max Boot · 9 Jan 2018 · 972pp · 259,764 words
The Stolen Year
by Anya Kamenetz · 23 Aug 2022 · 347pp · 103,518 words
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
by John de Graaf, David Wann, Thomas H Naylor and David Horsey · 1 Jan 2001 · 378pp · 102,966 words
They Have a Word for It A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases-Sarabande Books (2000)
by Howard Rheingold · 10 Mar 2020