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Books to read if you're planning a vacation in "Commerce", sorted by average review score:

Enterprise E-Commerce
Published in Hardcover by Meghan-Kiffer Press (January, 2000)
Authors: Peter Fingar, Harsha Kumar, and Tarun Sharma
Average review score:

Moments of brilliance, but not consistent
The subject of E-commerce is a curious one. I mean, what is it? Is it only electronic storefronts, or does it apply to airline frequent flier sites? What about business to business? What exactly do you expect to find in a book on this subject? Do you need a how-to guide on building transaction-oriented web applications? E-commerce texts seem to fall into 1 of 3 areas: marketing, design, and 'both'. This book falls into the 'both' category.

I can easily envision a generation of MBA students (with no actual experience doing anything in the real world) being inspired by this book, and confidently setting out into the work world armed with a veritable dictionary full of E-commerce buzzwords. After all, that is much of what an education consists of-gaining a specialized language. In this book, the buzzwords come thick and fast. The reader is warned about this on the cover, and the authors take pains to explain in the preface that just because something is a buzzword, doesn't mean that it doesn't mean anything. Such use of language can be distracting, but keep in mind that sometimes a paradigm actually is a paradigm.

Several of the chapters are almost inspirational, especially Chapter 1, which is profound and insightful, providing guidance to both general managers and technicians. Engineers would be well-advised to avoid being naïve about human behavior and not let their personal feelings about privacy blind them to the consumer desire for customization. Many web sites would be much more appealing to their patrons if their designers and decision-makers understood this chapter and its e-commerce imperatives.

Unfortunately, the book is marred by an uneven approach. Chapter 7, for instance, is a disaster, filled with gems like "An industry-specific component is unique to a given industry." This chapter is on component-based development, which is a difficult and complex subject, yet is crucial to contemporary E-business application architectures. I'm not sure how much a non-technical person can expect to get out of this chapter, but the gist of it probably comes through, and at least the reader gets exposed to important technology acronyms such as CORBA and JDBC.

Chapter 8, "E-Commerce Business and Technology Strategies," appears to have been written by the same author as Chapter 1, and it flies high, containing very wise statements such as "Before inter-enterprise teams can be effective, they need to build a shared vision." Internet applications are complex; I have seen what happens without such a shared vision, and it isn't pretty. Unfortunately, this chapter bogs down in sections also. I think the author is onto something profound with "What if the business engineering process was carried out with business components as the modeling medium?" but I really don't understand what it means-just a bit more discussion might have resulted in a blinding insight for me here.

One area that I thought especially interesting was the topic of standards, and the politics behind the standards bodies. The experience of the authors in this ever-changing business area is shared here to the benefit of architects who have to choose among competing standards-choices that may turn out to be very expensive several years down the road.

Overall, the book is information dense. There is quite a lot of ideas here, and I kept several colors of highlighter busy during the first read through. I might skim it again, because I didn't get it all the first time. There are so many things to discuss when a book sets out to introduce both the business models and the technology models. I think the authors were more successful in the former, and their introduction of concepts such as 'agility' and 'community' would greatly help the architects, designers, and coders in understanding exactly why they are being asked to do what they are doing. As far as the technology presentation goes, in general it is superficial and inadequate. Security is a vitally important topic in E-commerce design, but is given very little coverage. A 1.5 page introduction to the topic of public key encryption is entirely inadequate-I personally cannot cover this complex idea in such a short amount of space. Several of the other technology areas were given equally short shrift, making this a whirlwind tour that introduces, but doesn't always satisfy.

I recommend it, but I wish it were less uneven. The book does live up to its jacket, and it is entirely reasonably to claim "This comprehensive guide takes a holistic view of business and technology, enabling CEOs, COOs, CIOs, and CTOs to move boldly into their e-Commerce initiatives." It truly is an information system area that requires a high degree of interaction between both sides of a corporation, and the firms that succeed in this space will be those with employees who understand both technology and marketing. "Enterprise E-Commerce" provides a useful bridge between these often conflicting functions.

Complete and Practical E-Business
I read this book several months after it came out. I've reread it since

and refer to it often. The more I use the book, the more timeless I find

its fundamental concepts. Technologies --the telephone, the fax and the

computer-- have had a major influence on business, but the underlying

business fundamentals do not change. Instead, fundamentals are adapted

by successful corporations to take advantage of technology

breakthroughs. For companies that want to get beyond the crash of the

dot-coms in 2000; understand the real significance of the Internet in

business; and chart a sustainable e-business strategy, I highly

recommend Enterprise E-Commerce.

E-Business Book with Substance
For management fluff, go elsewhere -- for a solid business and technological foundation for e-business, this is the book. It's not often that a book can provide both substance and easy reading. Enterprise E-Commerce does both. It not only explains how the Internet changes business models, it goes below the surface to describe the software needed to implement innovative business processes that cross company boundaries. It also provides an extensive bibliography, online resources which are kept up-to-date, and a comprehensive framework for companies to plan and implement their e-business initiatives in a cohesive manner. The book makes a great companion to -- the Death of e and the Birth of the Real New Economy. Together these books not only provide a compass for navigating e-business, they belong on every manager's desk.


FutureConsumer.Com: The Webolution of Shopping to 2010
Published in Hardcover by Warwick Publishing (23 May, 2000)
Author: Frank Feather
Average review score:

THE FUTURE IS HERE
FRANK FEATHER HAS BEEN A VISIONARY FOR MANY YEARS. THIS BOOK PROVES HE HASN'T LOST HIS TALENT! HE EXPLAINS WHAT HAS BECOME OF OUR NATIONS CONSUMERS AND WHAT IS YET TO COME - VERY EXCITING PREDICTIONS - I LOOK FORWARD TO EXPERIENCING THE FUTURE CONSUMER.COM PHENOMENON -

GREAT VALUE: Updated 2nd Edition is EVEN BETTER than the 1st
.
This book is a winner and well worth your time and money. I found the 1st edition of "Future Consumer.Com" extremely useful in my work as a strategic planning and marketing consultant, referring to it often. And so did my clients.

But I just read the new, updated, 2nd Edition (in softcover), and it is even better! I fully agree that the first book was worth *5 Stars* but this is worth more and is bound to be successful. I remember the 1st edition was on Amazon's business best-seller lists for several weeks when it first came out. This one should do even better.

Not only has the material been updated to account for the dot-com shakeout (with the author explains in compelling detail) but new case study material has been added. As well, Feather has updated all his forecasts for e-commerce sales, by category, and basically is sticking with his original forecasts to 2010. And, based on the ongoing trend in e-commerce, I think he will be proven correct.

The 2nd edition also has some brand new material in the form of an Introduction that was not in the 1st edition. This 20-odd page chapter alone is worth the modest price of the book. It is an articulate, well-argued, but blistering critique of Harvard strategy guru Michael Porter who, in 2001, wrote a strategy paper in Harvard Business Review that basically claimed that the Internet changes nothing as far as strategy goes. When I read Porter's piece, I felt he was being very defensive of his own strategy model and failed to support his arguments, dismissing succesful online business models such as AOL and Amazon as exceptions to the rule. Feather brilliantly takes Porter's feeble argument apart, and shows why and how the Internet changes the rules of competition and, hence, business models and marketing strategy -- both in the online and offline world. I repeat, this chapter alone is worth the price of the ticket.

One final point worth noting is that the new 2nd edition retains the excellent layout and design of the 1st edition. So it is relatively easy to compare the two texts to see what's new and different. As well, the few typos that one reviewer found annoying in the earlier edition have all been fixed.

In short, this is a crisp, clean, up-to-date and easy-to-read book that everybody in business strategy and marketing should be reading. Feather's out-of-the box thinking not only stretches your mind but suggests concrete ways to achieve greater marketplace success. Whether you're selling products and services on Main Street or over the Web, this book points the way.

I would give it "7 Stars out of 5" but I am restricted to 5. Do yourself a favor and put this book, not on your bookshelf, but on your desktop. And get your colleagues to buy one too. Your business will only benefit.
.

Great E-Biz reference book!
I have my own internet business and I use this book to promote the future of the internet and business. It is a great window into the future! Great E-Biz book!


Techno-Ready Marketing : How and Why Your Customers Adopt Technology
Published in Hardcover by Free Press (April, 2001)
Authors: A. Parasuraman and Charles Colby
Average review score:

Great insight for all corporate technology strategists
After working with a number of corporations on business and technology strategies we have seen a number of companies invest millions of dollars in technology only to find that their customer do not use it. It is great to see a book that addresses the need and lays down a process for companies to understand the technology readiness of thier customers, allowing them to understand the potential uptake of new tools within their target markets. Great work and a must read for everyone with a role in marketing or technology strategy in corporations.

Packed with Knowledge!
If you want to sell technology, you must understand how and why your customers adopt technology and how they view the experience of getting to know a new tech product. Authors A. Parasuraman and Charles L. Colby provide an invaluable framework for assessing these characteristics of your customer base, along with voluminous data about U.S. national attitudes toward technology. Finally, they suggest specific marketing strategies that you can craft based on this customer data. We [...] recommend this innovative book as required reading for anyone in marketing or any technology-related field.

The truth about technology adoption
This book does indeed explain how and why people adopt technology. The authors show that most people have mixed feelings about technology - positive attitudes such as optimism and innovativeness but also negative ones such as discomfort and insecurity. What I find so compelling about this book is that, after 20 years of working in technology and marketing, it does the best job I have seen of explaining my own reaction to technology. Furthermore, the work is based on sound research, rather than a convenient selction of anecdotes. I think it's a must-read for anyone marketing or developing technology. Followers of Rogers will recognize this as the next step in the evolution of adoption and diffusion research.


Firebrands: Building Brand Loyalty in the Internet Age
Published in Hardcover by McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (14 August, 2000)
Authors: Michael Moon and Doug Millison
Average review score:

Setting your brand on fire.
There are so many books on the market that discuss the concept of 'brand' from so many different points of view, that it's difficult to sort out the good from the bad. This is one of the good ones.

Moon and Millison define the basic concepts around brand. They explain in clear buzzword-light language what influences the growth and positioning of a brand. Finally, they provide ample and well-explained pointers to further reading to help understand some of their basic ideas more clearly.

As a consultant working for a systems integrator, one of the things that impressed me the most was the focus on execution. Many books about branding seem to imply that the technical details are irrelevant to brand success, but _Firebrands_ makes the point that a relationship with a customer only has brand value when supported by appropriate policies, training, and technical infrastructure. This is a message that can't be, IMO, repeated often enough.

Well worth the time to read.

my review
I have read Firebrands and found it extremely useful. As a systems integrator in St. Louis, I have used this book to help my clients understand the importance of a technical infrastructure in building a vibrant brand.... Mind you, this is not a 60 second brand manager book.

Not Hype! A System for Reality...and innovation.
Firebr@nds is not a bedside book, it's a cookbook, a tool for being AT CAUSE when it comes to building successful, powerful communications for the internet.

As a Technology Interface Architect , the building of brand into the interaction of the product is vital to it's success.

My clients over the past 12 years have been besieged by what appears to them this mysterious thing out there that will grow over some process, that we will somehow invoke, and it will be successful if the powers that be are on our side.

This book makes it all very clear, while eliciting sympathy for all of us who have built brands. A genuine appreciation for its complexity is gained as you read a systemization of brandbuilding in Firebr@ands.

Moon has given us a thorough and deep taxonomy for building the brand from many different pragmatic angles. The dramatic distinctions in language make it easy to use the language as a tool in any company when it comes to educating organizations in building brand.

This is a book that I will return to over and over again as I help my clients grow their products into the future. It was a very brave, and necessary book to write. BRAVO!!!!


Bulls, Bears and Brains: Investing with the Best and Brightest of the Financial Internet
Published in Hardcover by John Wiley & Sons (04 January, 2002)
Authors: Adam Leitzes and Joshua Solan
Average review score:

Not Bad but not very filling
Some good ideas from web site promoters but only a few good ideas. Buy it used.

Meet some professional traders and advisors
This book presents short interviews with 21 professionals in the investment field, who share their investment philosophies. It is worthwhile to understand how these professionals make their living, as some of their ideas may give you insight for you own trading strategies. But, even if you do not come away with information pertinent to your own trading style, there is value in reading about the methods of others. The authors do a good job and the book is worth reading.

The best book to start investing
The best thing I can say about this book is every subject comes by his or her investment ideas honestly, and shares them openly. Most give them away, and the ones who charge formed their ideas for themselves, and only later decided to sell them. I think half of their strategies are foolish, and I think most other readers will agree with that, but we probably wouldn't pick the same half. That's okay, because between the biographies, track records and interviews in this book; plus what you can find by going to these Internet sites, you can make up your own mind. It seems like every other investment book either wants to sell you a predigested strategy, or tells you there's nothing better than putting all your money in a low-cost index fund. Bulls, Bears and Brains is the only intelligent alternative I know of.


Dynamic E-Business Implementation Management: How to Effectively Manage E-Business Implementation (E-Business Solutions)
Published in Paperback by Academic Press (July, 2000)
Authors: Bennet P. Lientz and Kathryn P. Rea
Average review score:

On the money
This book tells you exactly what it says on the cover "How to effectively manage e-business implementations". The chapters are short and sharp, the assumption is made you have experience in project management already. This is NOT a book about project management. I found the structure excellant for "active readers", easy to scan through and revise back on. If like me you manage several project you'll end up going back to it again and again.

Essential book for e-commerce projects
If you want to learn what e-commerce is and get a lot of jargon involving the words ¡°chain¡±, ¡°global¡±, ¡°supplier¡±, ¡°customer¡±, and ¡°e-¡°, do not look here. This is a book on how to do e-commerce. I am a manager at a software firm that implements e-commerce solutions. In doing many e-commerce projects over the past 4 years we have found that implementing e-commerce is quite different and more complex than standard IT projects. However, most books either do not address putting e-commerce in or they treat e-commerce as an IT application. E-commerce is not a standard IT project. Today about 40% of our staff do business analysis and support tasks for e-commerce rather than IT work. This is the first book to deal realistically with the problems that people in the real world face when they do e-commerce. We are now buying this book for our customers as well as our staff. The book handles the roles of business staff, consultants, and systems staff. More importantly the book discusses in depth how to detect, handle, and resolve specific things that you are likely to meet up with. This book is both valuable and realistic.

Excellent guidelines for e-bus projects
The authors have used their experience in e-business implementation to provide specific guidelines and tips in implementing e-business projects. The book deals with many technical, management, user, and vendor issues that you are likely to encountered and that we have dealt with in our e-business efforts. There is more time pressure and higher management expectations for e-business than standard IT or business projects. There are good suggestions for dealing with the time pressure. E-business is a program since one project leads to another. E-business projects overlap. This book addresses that in four chapters that handle expansion and on-going e-business. Using this book we have encountered fewer problems in our latest e-business project than in previous efforts. Some other areas of the book that are good are dealing with competing demands for resources between regular work and e-business projects as well as the method for tracking, analyzing, and reporting on e-business issues. Chapter 15 has some good charts and analysis for e-business issues. Another useful idea is to have multiple project leaders for the e-business implementation. There are examples in banking, manufacturing, retailing, and natural resources that are followed through the book. While written for e-business there are useful ideas here for IT projects overall.


E-Profit: High-Payoff Strategies for Capturing the E-Commerce Edge
Published in Hardcover by AMACOM (May, 1900)
Author: Peter S. Cohan
Average review score:

OK Synthesis & Structure of e-commerce Reports
'e-Profit' is aimed at executives/consultants, to clarify the e-business landscape, learn from others, and embark upon e-business projects.

The lightly referenced, confusingly typeset and verbose chapters span:

++ Part I- Winning The Economic Case for E-Commerce (evidence, financials, and competitive advantage).

++ Part II- Managing the Transition to E-Commerce (senior management, applications evaluation, and leading & sustaining change).

++ Part III- Building E-Commerce Infrastructure (architecture, suppliers, deals, and implementation).

Strengths include: the wide range of secondary source anecdotes and case studies; and the confident style & structuring of materials.

Weaknesses include: 40% redundant words for content; relative lack of useful illustrations/tables; irritating use of fonts/sizes; and superficiality of analysis.

Other alternatives texts in this area include: Deise et al's deep KPMG 'E-Business' (ISBN 0471376396); May's technical focus 'The Business of E-Commerce' (ISBN 052177698); Hoque's opinionated 'E-Enterprise' (ISBN: 052177487X); Siegel's glossy brainstorms in 'Futurize Your Enterprize'(0471357634); and Bloor's marketplace spin in 'electronic B@zaar' (ISBN185788258X).

Overall, 'e-Profit' felt a bit like a draft literature review in need of editing, after which would be a useful look-up resource.

Highly Recommended!
David Cohan's book is too useful to read in linear progression. Each chapter is a self-contained unit composed of an e-commerce problem, a case study analyzing how one company attempted to solve the problem, and a series of principles for effective problem solving. The book presents all aspects of e-commerce in useful detail, from motivating the reluctant CEO to managing the implementation of an e-commerce project. This book is for senior executives and change leaders, but it is useful to anyone who wants to learn more about the process of designing, developing, and implementing an e-commerce project. Project managers and consultants also will find the book useful because it presents the e-commerce buyer's perspective in straightforward detail. We[...] recommend this book to senior executives, change agents, business managers and students.

this is the real thing
i m currently in the midst of implementing a click and mortar set-up and have been scouring the book shelves for a book that gives u a strategic and at the same time realistic roadmap. i hv come across quite a number of books on this - metacapitalism by G Means & David Schneider; Executive's Guide to EBusiness by Deise, E-loyalty, loyalty.com, etc, etc.

I found that most books were either 1) too theoretical and ivory-towerish or 2) too process-oriented (almost a DIY guide). THe first is good for brainstorming and stress-testing your ideas but they are ultimately still at the idea stage. The second type is like having a map for you to explore the amazon jungle (pardon the pun). Sure it's all written in clear type there but what do you want really if u r about to dive in to the jungle? you want to know why you are going in (strategy), you need to have a good roadmap (process/skill-sets) but mostly you want an experienced guy to warn you of the dangers ahead - the pitfalls ... afterall do not forget when amazon, yahoo, ebay, priceline, boo.com debuted, they were the toasts of the theorists. You can never find fault with a theorist, but how much value is there unless you hv been thru it and live to tell. The devil is in the details. Cohan has succeeded in painting an informative wealth of these trenchant realities within the limitations of his well-written book, trenchant because he incorporates the need and analysis for financial returns vis-a-vis strategy and model. His training is in finance (wharton) and comp science/E Eng (MIT/Swarthmore)plus some years of his own consulting so i hv bet my dollars on his book and it has been a well placed bet and read.


Inside the Minds : Venture Capitalists - Inside the High Stakes and Fast Moving World of Venture Capital
Published in Paperback by Aspatore Books (August, 2000)
Authors: Aspatore Books Staff, Heidi Roizen, Guy Bradley, InsideTheMinds.com, Mark Lotke, Suzanne King, Alex Wilmerding, Jonathan Goldstein, Michael Moritz, and Jan Buettner
Average review score:

Old News - The internet hype is nauseating
This book was obviously written at the peak of the internet "Boom". The majority of the companies cited as examples of the onslaught of the new economy are no longer in existence. Earnings are barely mentioned. Companies cited as the movers and shakers of tomorrow are now penny stocks. The total lack of balance relative to other sectors is appalling and in retrospect is by itself educational. Everyone bought into the hype including the entire VC industry. This might explain why they all sat on the sideline in 2001 trying to regain their sense of direction. The entertainment value is a 5 and the educational value a 1. It is your choice.

Must Read for Every Entrepreneur & VC
This book is a must read for every entrepreneur and VC. The snippets of information in it are very valuable even after the downfall of the Internet economy-most of the text is more focused on timeless vc/entrepreneur related issues. I would highly recommend this book...

Good Read-Lots of Great Insight Even After the Shakedown
I was very impressed by the knowledge in this book. It has a ton of useful information for everyone from entrepreneurs to investors to other financial professionals. In addition, the content is fresh and much more applicable to the "after the shakedown" landscape than other venture capital oriented books such as eBoys, Confessions of a Venture Capitalist and Done Deals. This is a great book that has a ton of useful information straight from some very accomplised venture capitalists.


Selling Online: How to Become a Successful E-Commerce Merchant
Published in Paperback by Dearborn Trade Publishing (April, 2001)
Authors: Jim Carroll and Rick Broadhead
Average review score:

The **Best** Single E-Commerce Book for the Online Merchant!
When Carroll and Broadhead published Selling Online for Canadians in 1999 it was very well done. The revised version, which covers US e-commerce products and services, is the best single e-commerce book for the online merchant available in print. The authors have done a fabulous job including in this volume all of the essentials that an e-merchant needs to know...

...Selling Online consists of nine chapters, some short, and others 100 to 150 pages long. The first asks 23 tough questions that e-merchants should answer before setting up an online store. Too many small businesses go online with unrealistic expectations and flimsy business plans. These questions will help prospective e-tailers avoid disaster by grappling ahead of time with the opportunities and obstacles of e-commerce...

...Chapter 3, "Tips for Building an Effective Online Store," is the highlight of the book. The authors carefully examine each of the factors that affect sales in an online store, and explain how to get the maximum impact out of each. E-merchants who spend weeks studying this section and applying what they learn to their own site are bound to transform both the look of their site as well as their sales conversion rate...

...I really like the scope and detail contained in Selling Online. It's the first volume I am recommending to both novice and experienced e-merchants...

Reference book for Small-Medium businesses
This is not for home-based businesses! If you already have a retail/wholesale/manufacturing business and are looking to put up a serious business online, this is the complete reference. Lots of information on shopping cart software, hosting, promotion, merchant accounts and marketing. The most complete book for FULL-TIME online e-commerce.

EVERY PAGE HAS TIPS and links to more information.

Everything you need to know about starting an ecommerce site
I read the Canadian edition and found it covered all the bases from site design, to choosing between finding a host and installing your own ecommerce software or using hosted e-store services that use site 'templates'. It also covers security, getting a merchant license so you can accept credit card payments and also marketing strategies including how to get your new store listed with the major search engines and portals.

The book is an easy read with lots of illustrations of actual on-line examples and URL references. A must have for anyone even thinking about starting on online business enterprise!


The Wheels of Commerce
Published in Hardcover by HarperCollins (February, 1986)
Author: Fernand Braudel
Average review score:

The time of the world
This is the third volume of Braudel's 'Civilization and Capitalism' The third volume is about the capitalism as world economy. This is the reason why Braudel says that capitalism is premised on market economy. But market economy is not capitalism. To grasp this point, we should pay attention to Braudel's conception of time.
Braudel sees three levels of time. Events time is the immediately observable. But the event doesn't explain itself. They have to be placed within the context of what Braudel called conjunctures, or the set of forces that prepare the ground for events. Conjectural time is medium term; the span of an economic cycle, of a certain configuration of social forces, or of a certain paradigm of scientific knowledge. At the deepest level is longue duree. It involves structures of thought (mentality) that are very slow to change: economic organization, social practices, political institutions, language, and values. These structures are all cohesive and interdependent, yet each moves at a different pace. Conjunctural changes that become consolidate and stabilized could signal a change in the longue duree. Events are conditioned and shaped by the structures of the longue duree, but events may also cumulatively challenge, undermine, and transform these structures. The explanation of history involves the interaction of all three levels of time.
Three levels of time correspond to three layers of economy. capitalism has the longue duree as its modality of time. But Braudel use the term, capitalism a bit different from Marx's definition. Braudel defines capitalism as world-economy. There have been several world-economies throughout history. Capitalism is only one of them. World-economy structures (or organizes) the space as a hierarchy of division of labor. At the top of the hierarchy lies a center. Several world-cities surround it. So world-economy is about patterning space around a central city. This is the point Braudel meets the world system theory. In fact, Wallerstein, the proponent of world system theory borrowed Braudel's idea. American world system theories centered on Wallerstein and the SUNY's Braudel Center.

from market mechanisms to policy and history
Where the first two volumes of this trilogy covered living standards and the evolution of market mechanisms and capital accumulation, this one completes the picture with detailed historical examinations of the policies of the most successful cities and nations in the development of capitalism.

In fascinating detail, Braudel starts with the trade system of Venice, which allowed that tiny and resourceless city-state to dominate the world trade economy for centuries, and which culminated in the golden age of Amsterdam. THese cities, he argues persuasively, pushed commercial and financial capitalism to new heights, that is, with a combination of banking and control of trade routes, they created monopolies that benefitted themselves largely at the expense of their trading partners. They did so with a combination of readily mobilisable financial capital, clever warehousing (particularly in Amsterdam, which was like a perpetual market fair) that allowed them to control supplies and hence sell items at the right time for the higest price, domination of shipbuilding technologies as well as naval prowess (i.e. state piracy), and the control of the origin of their supplies, as in the Dutch East Indies for the spice trade. Braudel argues that it was a conscious policy. He also deliniates how Spain and then Portugal were beaten.

He then moves on to the birth of industrial capitalism in England in the late 18th C, which the loss of the American colonies - and hence ended its military obligations there while trade increased - facilitated. The great difference here, which he argues is a creative extension of the other long-existing forms of capitalism rather than its true beginning as many claim - was that investment was made in new technologies. It is similar to what the U.S. and Japan have done as major economic powers with different industrial systems: the U.S. had the largest national market, while Japan created cartels that could control prices (going after market share rather than immediate profit).

Braudel also examines basic questions of how an economy is successfully "revolutionised." What makes inventions take off in one society and not another? Is it one factor, or many acting together in concert? In particular, he compares the cases of the newly de-colonised United States and Latin American, in which the former was able to place itself at the center of the world economy and compete while the latter were weak and hence consigned to a subordinate role by the superpower of the day, Great Britain. He also examines the case of France, which was never able to enter the first rank of commercial and industrial nations prior to the 20C because, he argues, Paris (an administrative and not a trade capital) dominated the country and never learned to respect entrepreneurs.

These arguments are truly fascinating and presented with the perfect amount of detail: not too much as is often the case with Simon Schama, and not so little that only specialists can understand it. While it is sometimes difficult to follow his thread of logic, there is so much to learn from this book that I will consult it for the rest of my professional life. As a measure of its interest, I kept a marker in the footnotes, where I loved to look for references on virtually every page.

Nonetheless, as a 2000-page book that I loved, I am glad that it is done! It took me nearly two years to get through it all and I wished at times that it was more succinct. I found myself fliiping through it to see where illustrations would shorten the text. The conclusion, which attempts to offer persoective on the present, is also badly dated.

All in all, this is the most interesting and best economic history that I have ever read.

from lifestyle, to systems
Historians, they say, are either lumpers or splitters: the former seek to make generalizations while the latter seek to refute and refine them. Braudel strikes a balance between these approaches, at one time examining the economic point of view (and related theoretical controversies, such as the ideas of Schumpeter on innovation), while searching for historical examples that support or obliterate them. He is a true master scholar.

This volume adds to the first, moving from living standards to the establishment and functioning of trading and banking systems, both by capitalists (holders of sufficient resources to manipulate markets) and the merchants and craftsmen who operated within these markets. It is a crucial distinction that demonstrates how simple-minded the ideological argument of "free markets" can be: the rich can and do design economic systems to function to their advantage. You follow the development of international trading networks by Italians, Jews and Armenians; the evolution of banking and the handling of paper money; and even the influence of social hierarchies on economic growth.

While Braudel concentrates almost exclusively on Europe in this volume, which lessens the universality of his approach, it is utterly fascinating from page one. The economic systems he analyses were somewhat incomplete, though evolving rapidly. An additional limit to his approach is the exclusive focus on econimic life. At times, he views the building of chateaux and the commission of great works of art from the Reanassance to the 19C as a reflection of the lack of wealth-generating investment opportunities during a time of economic revolution!

And that is just a few of the issues covered. Each section of the book is like an essay on some basic economic notion. As such, the book assumes a great deal of historical knowledge in the reader, though Braudel often explains what he refers to briefly. For me, this added to its appeal and density, but it is often hard going. However, the book is leavened by wonderful and fascinating illustrations, which eases the task of getting through it at times.

Highly recommended.


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