This book examines why the differences in comparative economic development across the world have a geographical pattern. It argues that there is a missing component in the geography versus institutions debate, namely the role of culture and its impact either directly on development or indirectly...

This book foregrounds the pressures that three transformative technologies in the long sixteenth century-the printing press, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass-placed on long-held literary practices, as well as on cultural and social structures. Sheila J. Nayar disinters the clash between...