A Splendid Exchange

A Splendid Exchange
- How Trade Shaped the World

William J. Bernstein
2008

Trade is part of human nature. Besides war, trade is one of the main theme of human history. Trade has always be closely related to the rise and fall of nations and civilizations.

Naturally, the book started with the grain and copper trade of the Sumers. Grain trade were very important to the Hellenistic city states and was a factor in the Peloponnesian war.

Due to the almost prohibitive cost of transportation, luxury goods such as silk and spice were the major trade items in early history. The camel caravan silk road is well told in China. One can learn more details of the sea route silk/spice road in this comprehensive book. The wind system in the Arab sea is named "trade" wind. There were two routes from India ocean to the west. One is through Red sea. The other is through Persian Gulf, which is called the Simbad's route in this book.

Venice and Genoa were making their fortune from Spice trade, from selling slaves obtained from Black sea area to the Egypt's Mumluk army, from transporting crusaders.

Black death plague spreed through major trade routes and causes so much deaths all over the world.

With their navigation discoveries, Portuguese and Spaniards were the masters of Spice trade. Interestingly, these trade did not make Portugal nor Spain rich. Their governments were in bankrupted states and their people stayed poor.

Because of the innovations in Finance, Holland had the power to finance more ships and monopolize spicy trade. However, at that time, the wind system is mastered and transportation capacity increases made the luxury goods no longer that luxury. Commodity such as sugar, tea, slave(?), coffee, cotton and even opium became more important. After a few serious wars, Great Briton became the center in the era of commodity trade.

With the advancement of steel technology, rail road, steam boat in Industrial revolution, transportation cost and tariff is also getting lower and lower. Trade became ubiquitous and have greater and greater impact on people's lives.

Richardo was pioneering the theory of comparative advantage theory. Paul Samulson theorized the winners and losers during the trade process and provided a framework to analyze the camps of protectionism.

The author's knowledge about Chinese history were limited and there was some factual errors. He stated Zhu Di and Zhu Yunwen were brothers but actually Zhu Yunwen was Zhu Di's nephew. He also said the "West Liao" was established by Mogols. In fact, that's by the ChiDan. It's not easy to write such a comprehensive book.

The Myth of the Rational Market

The Myth of the Rational Market
-A history of Risk, Reward and Delusion on Wall Street

Justin Fox
2009

Very interesting book about the development and application of rational market theory. Reading the book is kind of having a conversation with dozens of Nobel price winner caliber economists.

Be humble. It's hard to beat the market. Assuming market is smarter than yourself is a good starting point to be a successful investor.

The Industrial Revolutionaries

The Industrial Revolutionaries
The making of the modern world, 1776-1914

Gavin Weightman
2007

Industrial revolution and lack of it was one of main factors why China had one hundred years of history being bullied by western power and Japan. When I was in school, Watt, Stephenson and Edison were the heroes.

This book tells a lot of stories about many interesting people in that era. It also tells the development of many industries such as iron and steel making, steam engine and internal combustion engine, oil and coal, canal and railroad, chemical, telegraph, etc.

It's a very informative book. Definitely worth reading.

铁血年华-辛亥革命那一枪

铁血年华-辛亥革命那一枪
郝连勃勃大王(梅毅)
2008.9 中国戏剧出版社

前几年看了电视连续剧"走向共和", 对清末民初的历史知道的根多一些. 梅毅的这本书也是一本不错的书, 对当时的历史格局,各方面政治势力的描述很让人信服, 对当时的很多历史人物的来龙去脉也给了比较好的交代.

Hot, Flat and Crowded

Hot, Flat and Crowded
Why we need a green revolution - and how it can renew American
Thomas L. Friedman
2008

Friedman's books are always very educational and informational. This one convinced me about the global warming with the CO2 data and the urgency of taking action.

We do need an energy revolution, replacing the "dirty fuel" with renewable energy, replacing the "buffet" kind of grid with "smart" grid.

The book mentioned a lot about china, its current environment challenges, and also interestingly its progress made recently. Like Germans and Japanese, I think Chinese can act collectively and decisively so we can be a leader in the green revolution.

The Ascent of Money

The Ascent of Money
Niall Ferguson
2008

The recent financial crisis makes me interested in reading more books about finance. So I picked up this book in Costco.

It touched several areas: bank, bond, stock market, insurance and real estate. Gave me some historical perspective about these topics.

Worth to read.

A Biography of the Continent Africa

A Biography of the Continent Africa
John Reader
1997

It took half a year and finally a huge snow storm to finish reading this book.

The book discussed the form of the continent from geology point of view. He also discussed the emergency of human beings. Since the humans are originated in Africa. This let me fell the history of Africa part of my own history.

It's well known that about African slaves' suffering in the Atlantic slave trade. The book also revealed the story of the slaves who are inside the Africa during the same period, which I did not realize before.

The scramble of Africa started with Belgium. This part of the history helps me to understand the ethnic cleansing happened in Rwanda about ten years ago.

Overall, it is a masterpiece on Africa. Highly recommended.

内蒙古通史纲要

内蒙古通史纲要
主编：郝维民 齐木德道尔吉
人民出版社 2006年

It's a book describing the history of various nations living in the Mongolia area. In the long Chinese history, various nomad nations lived north of Han people. Some of them came and went like meteor passing through the sky. It's a great challenge to describe them systematically. The book did a great job in sorting out various historical relationships between the nations. It's a very reference book for further research.

Some records on the demograph changes in the book are quite interesting:

The Han people increased from roughly one million at the beginning of 20th centurary to 5.15million at 1945. Han farmers immigritted a lot to Inner Mongolia because of the promotion of the Central government. At the same time, the Mongolia people only increased from 829k to 835k. Influx of farmers definitely negatively affected the warefare of the Mongolia nomads.

In 1956, the total population in Inner Mongolia was 8.966 million. Among that, Han people was 7.757 million, which is roughly 86.51%. Mongolia people was 1.086million, about 12.11%.

From 1978 to 2000, the total population in inner mongolia increased from 18.234 million to 23.323 million. Han people increased from 15.929 million to 18.466 million, which is about 15.92% increase. At the same time, Mongolia people increased from 1.986 million to 3.995 million, about 101% increase. The faster growther of Mongolia people definitely shows that the favorate policy towards minority.


A good book. Maybe too academia for most readers.

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
David S. Landes
1999 Norton

Another great book I read about the economic history. Full of historical facts. His emphasis on the importance of mechanical clock and eyeglass making is quite mind opening.

At first, it were the Spanish and Portuguese Sailors and conquistadors. Then the English lead the first industrial revolution. French and Germany initiated modern schools for science and technology. The Americans brought the mass production. Japanese perfected the manufacturing products. "Oversea" Chinese built their economic success stories.

The author considers culture as one of the important reasons why some countries are poor and others are rich. Culture is quite convenient to explain a lot of histories. Governance is another major factor.

A good book. Highly recommended.

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World
Gregory Clark
2007, Princeton University Press

The book tries to answer a few very interesting questions: why industrial revolution happened in England? why is the "great divergence" after the industrial revolution?

According to the author, before industrial revolution, the whole world was in the Malthusian trap, where the quality of life stays in subsistence level. When the incomes increases, there would be more people. When there are more people, the income decreases. When income decreases, the number of people drops. The is particularly true for static agrarian societies, where the limited supply of land put a great constraint on improving people's living standards.

Gregory used a lot of data to prove that the living standards were stay roughly the same from the neolithic revolution till the industrial revolution. He also proved that the living standards weren't that much different across the world, contrary to my former belief that Chinese had better lives before the imperialist came.

The income increases in England was associated with the increase of Capital, increase of population, technology improvement, etc. When land became a lesser important factor for production, the society broke the Malthusian trap.

Gregory mentioned a lot of factors to answer the "why England" question: relatively higher (comparing to East Asia) living standard, stable political system and property right. Gregory thought that the lower productivity per worker is the source of "great divergence". Less developed countries tends to hire more people to compensate the lack of capital. There things are all relevant. However, in my opinion, the questions are still not being convincingly answered, which let me a bit disappointed about the book.

The book is full of interesting data/charts. A good resource for further study.