Not without flaws but still an important work on the origins of capitalism.
A study of the long and deep influence of religion on economic thought and policy in the West, especially in the U.S.
Following in the footsteps of Max Weber and R.H. Tawney (from whom he takes his title), Friedman, a professor of political economy at Harvard, deepens the case that throughout modern history in the West, religious thought and economic policy have been reciprocally enmeshed. From the birth of serious economic thinking in the 18th century, questions of virtue and morality inescapably infused thought about wealth, poverty, commerce, and industry. At the same time, religious leaders preached about people’s obligations regarding earning, saving, using money wisely, and thinking about wealth in moralistic terms. The author sets his story in its full historical context, with the economic and theological principles of the leading characters not disembodied or isolated from life. Adam Smith, responsible for “an astonishing intellectual breakthrough,” is Friedman’s leading figure, but many others, some little known (Daniel Raymond, Shailer Mathews), populate his pages. Turning to the U.S., the author argues that the breakup of religious thought and practice into old-style Calvinist ideas and evangelical enthusiasm have led to many of today’s political and economic predicaments. Few readers will fail to come away convinced of Friedman’s strong central thesis, but there are omissions. Friedman, a noted economist, strangely devotes more ink to religious thought than to economic principles, and aside from late-in-the-book appearances by Friedrich Hayek and William F. Buckley Jr., this is a history of the rise of Protestant religion in relation to capitalism. We learn nothing of Jewish or Catholic thinkers or economists, especially curious given the author’s attention to the U.S. If this is really a Protestant story, what does it tell us? Friedman doesn’t say, but he does provide solid points of departure for further scholarly investigation.
Not without flaws but still an important work on the origins of capitalism.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-31798-3
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.
Well-crafted memoir by the noted media mogul.
Diller’s home life as a youngster was anything but happy; as he writes early on, “The household I grew up in was perfectly dysfunctional.” His mother lived in her own world, his father was knee-deep in business deals, his brother was a heroin addict, and he tried to play by all the rules in order to allay “my fear of the consequences from my incipient homosexuality.” Somehow he fell into the orbit of show business figures like Lew Wasserman (“I was once arrested for joy-riding in Mrs. Wasserman’s Bentley”) and decided that Hollywood offered the right kind of escape. Starting in the proverbial mailroom, he worked his way up to be a junior talent agent, then scrambled up the ladder to become a high-up executive at ABC, head of Paramount and Fox, and an internet pioneer who invested in Match.com and took over a revitalized Ticketmaster. None of that ascent was easy, and Diller documents several key failures along the way, including boardroom betrayals (“What a monumental dope I’d been. They’d taken over the company—in a merger I’d created—with venality and duplicity”) and strategic missteps. It’s no news that the corporate world is rife with misbehavior, but the better part of Diller’s book is his dish on the players: He meets Jack Nicholson at the William Morris Agency, “wandering through the halls, looking for anyone who’d pay attention to him”; hangs out with Warren Beatty, ever on the make; mispronounces Barbra Streisand’s name (“her glare at me as she walked out would have fried a fish”); learns a remedy for prostatitis from Katharine Hepburn (“My father was an expert urological surgeon, and I know what I’m doing”); and much more in one of the better show-biz memoirs to appear in recent years.
Highly instructive for would-be tycoons, with plenty of entertaining interludes.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780593317877
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: tomorrow
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
