Astoundingly rich in ideas and stories, Diamond’s sweet and beautiful book is more: an open-handed guide to what really matters in explaining, and sustaining, the Great Enrichment of 3,000 percent per person 1800 to the present. Diamond assuages the ancient fear of betterment, recently haunting us with spooks of AI and technological unemployment. He shows conclusively that an “innovative dynamism” enriches us all, materially and spiritually. The poor are bettered. The jobs are bettered. Read the book and be bettered, freed from specious and politically poisonous worries about economic change.
Deirdre McCloskey, UIC Distinguished Professor of Economics and of History Emerita. Author of Bourgeois Equality and many other works.
McCloskey’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.