The British Industrial Revolution is the key break in world history. Yet the timing, location, and cause of this Revolution are unsolved puzzles. Joel Mokyr's book is one of a number of recent attempted solutions. He explains the Industrial Revolution through the arrival of a particular ideology...

Avner Greif's <i>Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade</i> (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is a major work in the ongoing project of many economists and economic historians to show that institutions are the fundamental driver of all economic history and of all...