Saturday, October 20, 2012

More thought provoking than fun

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will(Eventually) Feel BetterThe Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will(Eventually) Feel Better by Tyler Cowen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a really small book - 111 pages including notes, index and "About the Author." I found it irresistable sitting on the New Books shelf, but it took a while to get through it. I would read a chapter, then read something else, but I kept returning. A lot of what Cowen has to say is sobering, but it is not hopeless. One mistake we seem to keep repeating is to assume that today's "breakthrough" will necessarily have the kind of world-shaking and quality-of-life improving impact that some 19th and 20th Century inventions had.

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