This was a book that held a lot of promise for me. It was an "economic history" of the world that would explain the big break from the "Malthusian world" of pre-1800 into the ever-improving world of the Industrial Revolution and modernity. But it doesn't deliver.
This book is just too much of an academic muddle for my taste. Too many petty details that created a lot of trees that wouldn't let me see the forest. I got the big theme. I could read the bits and look at graphs and get the minor points. It was the argument from details to grand conclusion that was a muddle.
The book has a great theme and it encompasses lots of exciting territory. So all the elements of a great read were there. But the author didn't deliver. I come away appreciating the complexity and details, but I don't come away convinced by Clark's arguments. His writing style is too pedantic. He loves details too much. He needed to paint with a broader brush and use details to support the argument. Instead he would write whole sections on details and lose the thread of the argument.
I was disappointed.
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