A Winding Dual History
3 stars
This book is probably best viewed as a dual history - following trends in religious and economic thinking in the UK and US starting around the 1500s. This book is extremely strong early, demonstrating the influence of contemporary religious trends on early thinking on capitalism, particularly "The Wealth of Nations." It then follows a few religious trends down historical rabbit holes, providing deep but mostly unnecessary context and little analysis on how these trends relate to economics. What's strange is that, as the last half of the book moves to mostly become a chronology, that Friedman doesn't lay out what's staring him in the face and that he essentially proves with these chapters - that across the centuries, people used religious language and selective readings to legitimate whatever it is they wanted to do economically at the moment.
Much of this book would be at home in the 1990s, …
This book is probably best viewed as a dual history - following trends in religious and economic thinking in the UK and US starting around the 1500s. This book is extremely strong early, demonstrating the influence of contemporary religious trends on early thinking on capitalism, particularly "The Wealth of Nations." It then follows a few religious trends down historical rabbit holes, providing deep but mostly unnecessary context and little analysis on how these trends relate to economics. What's strange is that, as the last half of the book moves to mostly become a chronology, that Friedman doesn't lay out what's staring him in the face and that he essentially proves with these chapters - that across the centuries, people used religious language and selective readings to legitimate whatever it is they wanted to do economically at the moment.
Much of this book would be at home in the 1990s, with Friedman parroting the long discredited "nation of immigrants" myth, ignoring Black people except for brief mentions of slavery (no mention of Jim Crow!), referring to North America as "empty" and having literally zero mentions of Native Americans, and completely ignoring the world outside the UK and US. The content that is here is still interesting and useful, but it's a flawed book and a missed opportunity.