Moviesdoortodoor.com: How Accounting Helped Make the Difference

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movies door to door review.......2003-09-03

Good overview of accounting for a startup, but the writing quality is a little like a Dick and Jane book. Good for teaching accounting, or for teaching a first grader to read.

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Mentoring by Wickman and Sjodin is real world!

"The reasonable thing is to learn from those who teach."

A step by step process for creating a mentor relationship.

A book for those who want more out of their careers!

Mentoring: The Most Obvious Yet Overlooked Key to Achieving More in Life than You Ever Dreamed Possible
Floyd Wickman , and Terri Sjodin
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
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Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

How can you learn the keys to achieving the expressions of your potential? How do you make your levels of professional performance second to none? How do you acquire the closely guarded secrets that distinguish outstanding and successful people from the simply average? The answer lies in the time-honored tradition of mentoring. While much has been written about mentoring, few if any books uncover the strategies and methods to finding mentors for every aspect of one's life. Mentoring reveals the secrets to achieving high degrees of success: personal, professional, economic, and emotional through a series of stories and letters illustrating the mentoring relationship. Floyd Wickman and Terri Sjodin (as mentor and protege themselves in writing this book) prove that mentoring can be an important catalyst to success. The authors worked together for five years researching and developing the work, calling upon mentoring experiences of other highly successful and fulfilled people. Mentoring relationships are not only available to a lucky few. As this book explains, anyone can maximize their potential with the help of the right mentor. Readers will discover how to create a successful mentoring lifestyle, including: four basic reasons why mentoring works and the benefits of having a mentor; how to select a good mentor or protege; 16 laws of mentoring; how to involve mentors in every facet of your life from family to fitness to spiritual development; secrets for effectively working with and developng a protege; creating meaningful synergy between mentor and protege.

Customer Reviews:

Mentoring by Wickman and Sjodin is real world!.......2001-01-27

This book was a pleasure to read...it provides a "how to" guide for both mentors and proteges that is REAL! I really appreciate the specific ideas and steps that show you what to do. Great Stories from both sides of the fence.

"The reasonable thing is to learn from those who teach.".......1999-03-23

Mentoring, A Success Guide for Mentors and Protègès by Floyd Wickman and Terri Sjodin is an excellent, enlightening and comprehensive book on the art of mentoring. For anyone who wants to enhance their knowledge and abilities in the practice of mentoring, this book meets their needs and expectations. What makes this book especially unique is that it is written as a guide for both the mentor and the mentee or protege. The authors provide a litany of practical information accompanied with charming anecdotes which give the reader simple, practical and easily understood information which can be applied to any developing mentoring relationship. Like an unfolding story, Mentoring describes insightful stories and letters about the mentoring relationships of others that are shared throughout the book. I especially enjoyed these stories because they touched the heart of human interaction, and personal growth, providing the reader brief moments for reflection and insight. Starting with a history of mentoring, the authors explore the reasons mentoring works. I found it interesting that the authors themselves were mentor and mentee in writing this book. After covering a number of aspects of mentoring: the 7 basic types of mentoring, the benefits of having or being a mentor, the qualifications of a good mentor and mentee and how to select one, the authors outline what they call the 16 Laws of Mentoring. Each chapter reaches into the soulful depth of a mentoring relationship without preaching. The feel is more in the lines of take what you want and leave the rest without threatening the developing relationship. If a mentor takes the advice, the opportunity for success increases tremendously. One needs to be conscious of where and how one chooses a protege and how a protege chooses a mentor. Each person needs to take responsibility for areas of reflection which create for each growth and insight into new areas of professional and personal development. When the student is ready the teacher will appear. This marvelous book offers the reader methods for taking advantage of the information given by those teachers who have learned well, embraced reflection, sacrificed, delved and explored their potential and are willing to share it with others. When one takes advantage of these angels who seem to appear at the right time, with their guidance, their support can only benefit one's journey and direction. Practical means of determining forces which direct a person to seek a mentor are revealed throughout the book. "Mentoring reveals the secrets to achieving high degrees of personal, professional, economic and emotional success through a real-world formula you tailor to create your own mentoring road map. One's mentor is a sounding board and source of pearls of wisdom. A mentor is someone who can help solve your problem yourself, a surveyor of your continent." (pg. 53) The authors believe that if each of us had a mentor, and each of us had a protege, then the world would be greatly improved. If a person responds to the gentle nudges of advice exchanged in the mentoring process and is committed to adapting the mentoring lifestyle, one will see marvelous change take place. This book would be an excellent resource for any class or discussion on mentoring. The authors have modeled each of the roles, the relationship, and the lifestyle involved in mentoring. It is obvious and apparent throughout the book that they practice what they so enthusiastically preach. Mentoring, A Success Guide for Mentors and Protègès by Floyd Wickman and Terri Sjodin is an excellent, enlightening and comprehensive book on the art of mentoring. For anyone who wants to enhance their knowledge and abilities in the practice of mentoring, this book meets their needs and expectations. What makes this book especially unique is that it is written as a guide for both the mentor and the mentee or protege. The authors provide a litany of practical information accompanied with charming anecdotes which give the reader simple, practical and easily understood information which can be applied to any developing mentoring relationship. Like an unfolding story, Mentoring describes insightful stories and letters about the mentoring relationships of others that are shared throughout the book. I especially enjoyed these stories because they touched the heart of human interaction, and personal growth, providing the reader brief moments for reflection and insight. Starting with a history of mentoring, the authors explore the reasons mentoring works. I found it interesting that the authors themselves were mentor and mentee in writing this book. After covering a number of aspects of mentoring: the 7 basic types of mentoring, the benefits of having or being a mentor, the qualifications of a good mentor and mentee and how to select one, the authors outline what they call the 16 Laws of Mentoring. Each chapter reaches into the soulful depth of a mentoring relationship without preaching. The feel is more in the lines of take what you want and leave the rest without threatening the developing relationship. If a mentor takes the advice, the opportunity for success increases tremendously. One needs to be conscious of where and how one chooses a protege and how a protege chooses a mentor. Each person needs to take responsibility for areas of reflection which create for each growth and insight into new areas of professional and personal development. When the student is ready the teacher will appear. This marvelous book offers the reader methods for taking advantage of the information given by those teachers who have learned well, embraced reflection, sacrificed, delved and explored their potential and are willing to share it with others. When one takes advantage of these angels who seem to appear at the right time, with their guidance, their support can only benefit one's journey and direction. Practical means of determining forces which direct a person to seek a mentor are revealed throughout the book. "Mentoring reveals the secrets to achieving high degrees of personal, professional, economic and emotional success through a real-world formula you tailor to create your own mentoring road map. One's mentor is a sounding board and source of pearls of wisdom. A mentor is someone who can help solve your problem yourself, a surveyor of your continent." (pg. 53) The authors believe that if each of us had a mentor, and each of us had a protege, then the world would be greatly improved. If a person responds to the gentle nudges of advice exchanged in the mentoring process and is committed to adapting the mentoring lifestyle, one will see marvelous change take place. This book would be an excellent resource for any class or discussion on mentoring. The authors have modeled each of the roles, the relationship, and the lifestyle involved in mentoring. It is obvious and apparent throughout the book that they practice what they so enthusiastically preach.

A step by step process for creating a mentor relationship........1999-03-22

The purpose of this book is to help the reader use mentoring to achieve what they want in life. The book explains the benefits of having a mentor or being a mentor, how to fnd a mentor or protégé and how to involve mentoring in every facet of your life. This book would be good for anyone who is looking for a step by step process on how to set up a mentoring relationship. At the end of each chapter there are highlights given that recapture the main ideas. This is a handy guide to refer to when needed. I felt the book acclaimed the many benefits of having a mentor but didn't adequately address the benefits of being a mentor. The general tone of the book seemed a bit too self-serving and business oriented. The important aspect of a mentoring relationship, self reflection, is not addressed.

A book for those who want more out of their careers!.......1998-10-22

This is a great book for all of those who are at the turning point in their careers. It provides the answer to those inevitable questions, "What next?" "Is that all there is?" and "What can I do to get rejuvenated in my career?" Yes, the answer is mentoring, but this book provides the justification for this ancient form of education and it contains a detailed action plan to make it a successful experience for both the mentor and the protege. A definite must-read.

Book Description

Offering fascinating insight into a man who has significantly raised the profile of astronomy among the public, this autobiography of Patrick Moore spans 80 years of social history with wit and charm. Moore describes his research to map the moon, which began prior to the NASA Apollo missions during his undergraduate years at Cambridge University, and was eventually used by Russia to correlate the first Lunik 3 pictures. Moore also chronicles his work on BBC's The Sky at Night, where he began as the presenter in April 1957 and continues today, the show having landed in the record books as the world's longest-running TV series with the same presenter.

Book Description

A practical, easily accessible guide for bench-top chemists, this book focuses on accurately applying computational chemistry techniques to everyday chemistry problems. Provides nonmathematical explanations of advanced topics in computational chemistry.

Focuses on when and how to apply different computational techniques.
Addresses computational chemistry connections to biochemical systems and polymers.
Provides a prioritized list of methods for attacking difficult computational chemistry problems, and compares advantages and disadvantages of various approximation techniques.
Describes how the choice of methods of software affects requirements for computer memory and processing time.

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Focuses on when and how to apply different computational techniques.
Addresses computational chemistry connections to biochemical systems and polymers.
Provides a prioritized list of methods for attacking difficult computational chemistry problems, and compares advantages and disadvantages of various approximation techniques.
Describes how the choice of methods of software affects requirements for computer memory and processing time.

Customer Reviews:

A nice practical guide for the non-specialist.......2005-10-12

This book is targeted at working chemists (not theorists) and engineers, who want to use computational chemistry to address real-world research problems. It does a good job of providing a general overview of a wide number of techniques with an emphasis on practical considerations, such as the appropriateness and accuracy of the various techniques for a given type of problem, and the potential pitfalls that must be avoided. It does a great job of explaining the jargon and technical nomenclature, which would otherwise stump new-comers to the field, including short descriptions of the various levels of theory (Semi-empirical Methods, HF, DFT Methods, Perturbation theory, CI, CC, etc...), Basis Sets (STO-3G, 6-31G, CBS, LANL2DZ, etc...), calculation types (geometry optimization, frequency calculations, population analysis), and so on. In addition it has a very useful appendix containing short reviews of about 30 different software packages used in the field.

While the book is a useful practical guide, the potential buyer should recognize that it is not intended to be a textbook on Quantum Chemistry. It provides a general overview of the various theories, indicating some of the major assumptions, but does not delve into any details of how the theories actually work or are implemented. It contains very little math and doesn't even attempt to explain how to solve the few equations it does have (the obvious assumption being that the computer will solve them). All of this is fine for the stated goal of the book, but the reader should realize that if he really wants to learn Quantum Chemistry, rather than just run a software program that uses it, he should at least find another book to read in conjunction with this one.

On the practical side, this book does a good job of pointing out the weaknesses and strengths of the many computational chemistry techniques. It also provides instructions for setting up calculations and, more importantly, recommendations for what to do when the calculations fail. On the downside, because the book covers such a wide range of topics and does not focus on a single software package or type of calculation, the advice or recommendations are sometimes too general to be of much use. Nevertheless, armed with this book, one of the many available computational chemistry software packages, and its corresponding user's manual any competent chemist or chemical engineer should quickly be able to start running useful calculations.

Book Description

Drawing on his investigation of over one hundred mid-Victorian British newspapers and periodicals, Alvar Ellegård describes and analyzes the impact of Darwin's theory of evolution during the first dozen years after the publication of the Origin of Species. Although Darwin's book caused an immediate stir in literary and scientific periodicals, the popular press largely ignored it. Only after the work's implications for theology and the nature of man became evident did general publications feel compelled to react; each social group responded according to his own political and religious prejudices. Ellegård charts the impact of this revolution in science, maintaining that although the idea of evolution was generally accepted, Darwin's primary contribution, the theory of natural selection, was either ignored or rejected among the public.

Darwin and the General Reader the Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859-1872

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Darwin and the General Reader the Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859-1872

Manufacturer: Goteborg University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IFGJ52

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Darwin and the General Reader: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859-1872
Alvar Ellegard
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPBXT8

Book Description

RIS 98 chronicles the work presented at the Ninth International Symposium on Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy. Topics cover all aspects of RIS applications, including medical, biological, and environmental. This meeting is the most comprehensive information exchange and best available reference source for anyone using this ultra-sensitive analytical technique. Papers accepted for inclusion have been refereed before publication.

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P-40 Warhawk Aces of the MTO (Osprey Aircraft of the Aces No 43)
Carl Molesworth
Manufacturer: Osprey Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1841762881
Release Date: 2002-01-25

Book Description

Thrown into action following the Torch landings of late 1942, the ‘green’ American pilots flying the obsolescent P-40F suffered cruelly at the hands of seasoned German fighter pilots flying superior machines. Those that survived learnt quickly, and a handful of Warhawk pilots succeeded in making ace by the time the Axis forces surrendered in North Africa. The action then shifted to Sicily and Italy, and the P-40 remained in service until mid-1944. This book charts the careers of the 23 men who succeeded in making ace during that time, despite the advent of much better P-47 and P-51 fighters.

P-40 Warhawk Aces of the MTO.: An article from: Air & Space Power Journal

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P-40 Warhawk Aces of the MTO.: An article from: Air & Space Power Journal
Robert Tate
Manufacturer: U.S. Air Force
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from Air & Space Power Journal, published by U.S. Air Force on September 22, 2003. The length of the article is 507 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: P-40 Warhawk Aces of the MTO.
Author: Robert Tate
Publication: Air & Space Power Journal (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2003
Publisher: U.S. Air Force
Volume: 17 Issue: 3 Page: 109(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

Pomeranz argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber. This made Europe's failure to use its land intensively much less of a problem, while allowing growth in energy-intensive industries. Another crucial difference that he notes has to do with trade. Fortuitous global conjunctures made the Americas a greater source of needed primary products for Europe than any Asian periphery. This allowed Northwest Europe to grow dramatically in population, specialize further in manufactures, and remove labor from the land, using increased imports rather than maximizing yields. Together, coal and the New World allowed Europe to grow along resource-intensive, labor-saving paths.

Meanwhile, Asia hit a cul-de-sac. Although the East Asian hinterlands boomed after 1750, both in population and in manufacturing, this growth prevented these peripheral regions from exporting vital resources to the cloth-producing Yangzi Delta. As a result, growth in the core of East Asia's economy essentially stopped, and what growth did exist was forced along labor-intensive, resource-saving paths--paths Europe could have been forced down, too, had it not been for favorable resource stocks from underground and overseas.

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The Great Divergence brings new insight to one of the classic questions of history: Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia? As Ken Pomeranz shows, as recently as 1750, parallels between these two parts of the world were very high in life expectancy, consumption, product and factor markets, and the strategies of households. Perhaps most surprisingly, Pomeranz demonstrates that the Chinese and Japanese cores were no worse off ecologically than Western Europe. Core areas throughout the eighteenth-century Old World faced comparable local shortages of land-intensive products, shortages that were only partly resolved by trade. Pomeranz argues that Europe's nineteenth-century divergence from the Old World owes much to the fortunate location of coal, which substituted for timber. This made Europe's failure to use its land intensively much less of a problem, while allowing growth in energy-intensive industries. Another crucial difference that he notes has to do with trade. Fortuitous global conjunctures made the Americas a greater source of needed primary products for Europe than any Asian periphery. This allowed Northwest Europe to grow dramatically in population, specialize further in manufactures, and remove labor from the land, using increased imports rather than maximizing yields. Together, coal and the New World allowed Europe to grow along resource-intensive, labor-saving paths. Meanwhile, Asia hit a cul-de-sac. Although the East Asian hinterlands boomed after 1750, both in population and in manufacturing, this growth prevented these peripheral regions from exporting vital resources to the cloth-producing Yangzi Delta.

Customer Reviews:

Powerful data and arguments.......2007-04-26

Kenneth Pomeranz's The Great Divergence reinforces some arguments of Frank's ReOrient and reformulates some others. Like Frank, Pomeranz argues that European economy was not unusually different from or superior to the economies of China and Japan until the 19th century. Like Frank, Pomeranz also argues that the critical factors that made possible the rise of Europe were external rather than internal factors. However, unlike Frank who explained the rise of the West in the 19th century through "the fall of Asia" in the previous century, Pomeranz attributes the nineteenth-century divergence between the European economy and the Asian economies to Europe's coal and New World's land that jointly relived the ecological constraints of the nineteenth-century Europeans.

Explaining Pre-Divergence Similarities:

Pomeranz starts his book with comparisons of European and Asian economies in 16th through 18th centuries. A difference in Pomeranz's approach is that he prefers to compare "regions" rather than countries. He argues that such places as Yangzi Delta, The Kanto plain, Britain, the Netherlands, and Gujarat, shared some crucial features with each other, which they did not share with the rest of the world or subcontinent around them. Thus, he prefers to compare these special areas directly rather than within the larger "arbitrary" continental units (p. 8).

Pomeranz first demonstrates that there were no significant differences between England, China, and Japan in terms of average standards of life. Average life expectancy and calorie intake were at comparable levels in all three countries. In the same vein, the European had no superiority to Asians with respect to technology and mining. China was ahead of Europe in physical science, mathematics, and maternal and infant health. Europe's irrigation technology also lagged behind China, India, and Japan. Even as late as first half of the 19th century, Indian iron was reported to be superior to English iron (pp. 44-6). If Europe had any real technological edge in the 18th century, it was not in tools or machines, but in "instruments" such as clocks, watches, telescopes, and eyeglasses (p. 67).

Pomeranz then tries to show that differences in terms of labor and land markets in Europe and China in 16th through 18th centuries were significant and did not always favor Europe so that they would be a viable explanation for the later divergence. Indeed, overall China was closer to market economy than was most of Europe, including most of "western" Europe. Much of Western Europe's farmland was harder to buy and sell than that of China. In Yangzi Valley, for example, close to half of land was rented (p. 72-3). This was also similar in labor market. Labor was not less free in China than in Europe (pp. 80-1). Thus, Pomeranz concludes that Europe's factor markets for land and labor "seem no closer to Smithian ideas of freedom and efficiency than do those of China, and perhaps a good deal less so," (p. 107).

Part II of The Great Divergence deals with the less-analyzed issue of consumption. Pomeranz takes issue with Sombart and some others' argument that Europe a produced a unique "consumer society" that provided a demand base for industrial revolution. Pomeranz challenges the "consumer society" argument on two grounds. On the one side, he demonstrates that the rise in the European consumption of such luxury goods as tea, sugar, and tobacco was very incremental until the 19th century. He therefore asserts that imagining an irreversible "birth of a consumer society" before 1850 may be seriously misleading (p. 119). On the other side, he demonstrates that consumption of these everyday luxury goods were at comparable levels in China and Japan. The consumption of durable luxuries (furniture, pictures, china, books, jewelry, etc.) was not significantly different in these three regions either (pp. 130-1). Thus, Europe did not have any type of "consumer society" advantage vis-à-vis China and Japan that would give her a head start in the competition to rise. I should also note that European figures as to consumption of luxury goods refute the arguments on "European" miracle as well. Pomeranz demonstrates that, if anything, it was a British, and to lesser extent Dutch, revolution and not a European one until 1850 (pp. 119).

To sum up the first part, Pomeranz demonstrates that Europe was not exceptionally different from China or Japan in terms of production, market regulation, or the consumption of luxury goods. Given this similarity of internal factors, Pomeranz turns to external linkages to explain the nineteenth-century divergence.

Explaining the Divergence:

A weakness in Andre Gunder Frank's book was that he could not adequately account for the "rise of the West" in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Frank's argument was that Asian economies were altogether facing a Kondratieff B-cycle in the first half of the 18th century and this allowed Europe to finally outdo the Asians. He therefore asserts that "the fall of Asia" preceded European political and military intervention in Asian nations (ReOrient, pp. 266-8). Pomeranz finds this argument impressionistic and discards it on the grounds that population growth and ecological effects that were argued to make China "fall" were present in Europe as well. Thus, he asserts, "if Europe was not yet in crisis, then in all likelihood China was not either," (p. 12).

Pomeranz argues that the primary problem that both European and Asian nations were facing by 18th century were the ecological constraints that resulted from increasing population and scarce land. Therefore, the real and long-lasting solution would necessitate land-saving innovations rather than labor-saving ones.
As such, industrial revolution was a cause of later European rise than result of previous European exceptionality.

A Conclusion:
When compared with Frank's ReOrient, Pomeranz's The Great Divergence is more robust and convincing in two respects. First, it does not have a "Sinocentrism" bias and argues that the pre-1800 world was "a polycentric world with no dominant center," (p. 4). Second, it tries to explain the rise of Europe in the 19th century with substantive factors rather than mysterious Kondratieff cycles. In that respect, The Great Divergence is a nice remedy to the gaps and problems in ReOrient. However, I think that Pomeranz's downplaying the importance of profits that European made through colonialism is misleading. In evaluating the role of colonial profit-extraction in Europe's rise, one should take into account its impact on the continuation and spread of industrial revolution as well as on industrial revolution itself. Even if the spark of the industrial revolution could be lighted without the profits made in the New World, the fire of industrial revolution would not have survived a couple decades if it were not for the colonial resources and markets.

povocative and meticulously researched!.......2006-05-25

The strengths: Very provocative, aiming straight at conventional wisdom, be it euro-centric or world-system ones. Solid research behind the comparative study of Europe, China, and to a lesser extend, Japan. Pomeranz gives out hard evidence in life-expectacy, birth rates, market condition, ecological stress etc., hightlighting striking similarites between these socities in the 18th century.

Some readers may have problem with his conclusion that industrialization went ahead only because Europe got lucky in the convenient location of coal and the readily available resourses of the new world. However, just because these are paramount factors does not mean that they are all it needed. Put another way, had China got the same good fortune, it does not necessarily follow that China would industrilize, nor has Pomeranz argued this way.

Weaknesses: The writing is BAD, very convoluted. However, the most important failure is that Pomeranz treats these societies as though they were static. He failed to take into consideration their difference in the RATE of change. The fact that Europe was playing a catch up to Asia through-out the middle ages, and achieved par in pre-modern time, had to imply a quicker pulse. Europe's gradual opening of the mind (reformation ,renaissance), was roughly concurrent with China's gradual closing (the advent of neo-confucianism, ossification of the civil examination system). It's hard to believe that this change of fortune had no long-lasting impact on the underlying dynamics of the societes. Culture does matter, it's just been given a bad name by the likes of Huntington and Landes:)

Europe Got Lucky.......2006-02-13

Pomeranz advances the thesis that Europe's rise to world power (instead of a potentially similar but not historically realized rise by China, Japan, or India) was not caused by any internal social advantage possessed by western Europe-at least not principally caused. Pomeranz uses extensive research to demonstrate that western Europe, China, and Japan were not fundamentally different societies at the beginning of the modern era. The author maintains that Europe had the good fortune of having the land and mineral resources of the New World available at the right time, along with the conveniently-located coal resources of England; and it is this collection of fortuitous advantages that enabled Europe to propel itself into industrial revolution and world power.

The premise of the book is promising. The meat of the book can be a bit difficult to chew. The author compares the human, energy, land, and other resources of Europe and China in great detail to make his case. The sheer volume of facts and figures can make the going slow. Still, it's worth reading all of what the author has to say.

Overall, the argument is compelling. All three societies (western Europe, China, and Japan) were faced with populations that had more-or-less come in line with the carrying capacities of their lands based on the level of technology of the day. Additional agricultural productivity could only have come with additional inputs of labor into the existing stock of land. This is essentially what happened in China. Western Europe, led by England, went the way of labor-saving techniques and technologies that would not have been practicable without access to the additional agricultural potential and mineral wealth of the New World. Other factors, such as financial institutions and internal competition fade in importance before the simple math of carrying capacity.

The Great Divergence is quality reading. One does not have to agree with everything contained in the book to absorb the basic point: Europe got lucky. Be prepared to wade through an appropriately generous supply of facts and figures to back Pomeranz's claim.

nonsense.......2005-12-05

In "The Great Divergence", Kenneth Pomeranz presents an exhaustive investigation of the minutest differences and similarities in development of China and Western Europe. His claim, and stated objective, is to show that Europe's emergence as a preeminent power was the result of privileged access to overseas colonies, exploitation of non-Europeans, and a fortunate `geographic accident' of the location of coal in England. However, considering China's significant, and much earlier, developments in science, technology, and shipping, not to mention their huge deposits of coal, and its use some 600 years before the Europeans to make iron, it's difficult to understand Pomeranz's rationalization of those claims and ultimately the whole point of his book.

His specialty and interests clearly lie in China. In this book he attempts to shed a somewhat biased benevolent light on China by explaining the violent circumstances that led to the industrial revolution in Europe, and why it didn't happen in China. He presents a comparative analysis in such close, tortuous, detail that he becomes myopic in drawing his conclusions. His joy and skill clearly lie in analysis, rather than synthesis, and in the process, and among the ensuing debris, he loses a view of the whole as processes of nation building rather than competing sets of historical data. The outcome notwithstanding, he consistently paints each step in the process of growth in Europe and its colonies as a violent and ugly stepsister to a more sophisticated, benign version taking place in China. All of which may be true, but he discounts the effects of institutions, capital markets, capital accumulation, and regulatory competition in Europe as having marginal effect on the difference in outcome between the two areas because in his opinion what was happening in Europe was so similar to what was going on in China. He states that "European science, technology, and philosophical inclinations alone do not seem an adequate explanation, and alleged differences in economic institutions seem largely irrelevant".

Regulatory competition in Europe, for Pomeranz, equates to military competition. Although it could be argued from a more objective perspective that military research and development regularly spins off technological advances applicable in commercial areas, Pomeranz claims that in Europe `the net effect of warfare on technological innovation is likely to have been negative'. Clearly not true, but his argument about it possibly killing off other inventors was kind of funny. The development of institutions and property rights arising from this competition for him equals only the purchases of position, interference of guild control, and the granting monopoly privileges. He claims that all served to keep prices high, limit the extent of markets, and restrict output. The most positive function of `military' competition seen by Pomeranz is in the overseas projection of power. This lies in contrast to his claim that China was engaged in competitive trade with low margins, unprivileged by the state, that couldn't generate enough profits to finance a European style military capitalism. Here he ignores the Chinese obsession with intensive land use to feed its armies. The vast differences between the European states and the diversity of politics, social constructs, and institutions therein will show that had any single one of them been dominant the story of Europe, and the world, would have been very much different. Had the Chinese the benefit of this fracture, the voyages of Zheng He would have been continued, but when he died, the Confucians were regaining power and There was no political or spiritual will to continue. They felt that other nations had nothing to offer the already prosperous Chinese and they had no need to conquer their souls. Their voyages were ended, their fleets were dismantled and they turned inward. It became a crime to set sail from China in a multi-masted ship. This was their choice. One nation, one choice. Had there been competition among states in China, someone, somewhere would have chosen to continue.

As far as ethical systems and ideology are concerned, Pomeranz doesn't consider the consequences of differing motivation but only writes that philosophical inclinations do not seem an adequate explanation of divergent paths. Lost in analysis of the details of the similarities, here he misses the significance of the differences. Arguing that they were too small to create the large disparities in outcomes, he fails to ask whether those differences were what led to different choices. The differences in the ethical systems of Christian Western Europe and Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist China are enormous. The differences in the choices made within the context of those systems, especially within the protestant reformation and the creation of the Church of England, are significant. Pomeranz claims that ideology, or `philosophical inclinations', can't explain the different outcomes in the fortunes of China and Europe, but it was ideology and philosophy that led to the divergence in their development paths. Western Europe's history of fighting Muslims to keep them at bay and out of Europe established their crusading zeal to protect themselves by trying to convert everyone they could find. They embodied this fear and hegemonic drive and made Christian solipsism an imperative part of their culture. Vasco Da Gama said that the objectives of his voyages were "Christians and Spices". This dogmatic drive of the Europeans and their churches' implicit consent of their conquests and colonialism lent a higher power to their expansion. The Chinese chose not to continue their voyages. The Europeans were on a mission from God.

In this book, great tenaciousness in presenting historical data meets an astounding lack of insight into behavior and economics, and leaves the reader (at least me anyway) wondering why it was written in the first place.

Somewhat Innovative, Hard to Read.......2005-11-24

This book does a good job of criticizing many Anglo-centric explanations of why Europeans industrialized first by providing detailed evidence that the area near the Yangzi river delta was mostly as advanced as England when England started the industrial revolution.
It does a less convincing job of arguing that coal and new world land were the main reasons for England's success. I'm tempted to believe that American sugar provided desperately needed calories to break out of a Malthusian trap, but the evidence doesn't show that became significant until the industrial revolution had already started.
Conveniently located coal undoubtedly gave England a boost, but not a big enough boost that there is a practical way to decide it was more important than the numerous cultural differences which might have given England the edge it needed.
The book makes a serious effort to dismiss those cultural explanations, but is not thorough enough. In particular, I'm disappointed with the cryptic way that it dismisses the relevance of the ideas in Helmut Schoeck's book Envy.
The style is often deadening, with lengthy descriptions of details whose relevance is unobvious.

The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.(Book Review): An article from: Independent Review

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The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.(Book Review): An article from: Independent Review
Gary M. Anderson
Manufacturer: Independent Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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This digital document is an article from Independent Review, published by Independent Institute on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 1041 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.(Book Review)
Author: Gary M. Anderson
Publication: Independent Review (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: Independent Institute
Volume: 8 Issue: 3 Page: 445(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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The Great Divergence China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy

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The Great Divergence China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
Kenneth Pomeranz
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N7IONA

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A fascinating review of scientists and religious beliefs.......1997-09-16

Russell Stannard, Professor of Physics and Christian theologian, interviewed a collection of leaders in religion and various scientific disciplines for BBC Radio 4 in 1996. This book is a friendly, readable and informative account of those conversations.

The frontiers of scientific discovery are relentlessly advancing and this book attempts to discover whether God may be a casualty of this never-ending battle to understand. By interviewing such a wide range of entertaining and relevant people, Stannard has prepared a stimulating review of current feelings that will interest readers from all backgrounds, whether they be scientists, theologians, or a combination of both.

The expertise of interviewees spans a wide range of fields: from Will Provine (biologist at Cornell University and atheist) and Richard Dawkins (zoologist and popular science author), to Jocelyn Bell-Burnell (the astronomer who discovered pulsars and a central figure in the Quaker movement) and John Habgood (theologian, former physiologist and previously Archbishop of York). The questions that are asked of them give a fascinating insight into their views and their justification for holding them.

Do astronomers think of themselves as insignificant specks lost in the enormity of space? Do evolutionary biologists consider themselves merely animals? Read this book and find out!

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