The Rational Optimist
by Matt Ridley
Ridley's history of prosperity as the product of exchange and specialization, 'ideas having sex,' from stone tools to the internet, and his optimism that this process will continue to solve problems. It is wide-ranging and persuasive about the past; its confidence about the future is more contested.
Read it if…
you want an economic-historical explanation of why life got better.
Skip it if…
you want balance on climate and risk; Ridley is sanguine.
Three things you will actually use
- Exchange and specialization drive progress.
- Innovation is recombination.
- Pessimism has been wrong for two centuries; weight that.
Do this first
Trace one everyday object through the number of people and countries involved in making it.
Our verdict
Wide-ranging and persuasive.
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