The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die - Hardcover

Ferguson, Niall

3.54

2,606 ratings by Goodreads

9781846147326: The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846147328 ISBN 13: 9781846147326

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2012

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The latest work from Niall Ferguson, bestselling author of Empire, The Great Degneration is based on his 2012 BBC Reith Lectures 'The Rule of Law and Its Enemies'

The decline of the West is something that has long been prophesied. Symptoms of decline are all around us today, it seems: slowing growth, crushing debts, aging populations, anti-social behaviour. But what exactly is amiss with Western civilization? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, is that our institutions - the intricate frameworks within which a society can flourish or fail - are degenerating.

Representative government, the free market, the rule of law and civil society: these were once the four pillars of West European and North American societies. It was these institutions, rather than any geographical or climatic advantages, that set the West on the path to global dominance after around 1500. In our time, however, these institutions have deteriorated in disturbing ways.

Our democracies have broken the contract between the generations by heaping IOUs on our children and grandchildren. Our markets are increasingly distorted by over-complex regulations that are in fact the disease of which they purport to be the cure. The rule of law has metamorphosed into the rule of lawyers. And civil society has degenerated into uncivil society, where we lazily expect all our problems to be solved by the state.

The Degeneration of the West a powerful - and in places polemical - indictment of an era of negligence and complacency. While the Arab world struggles to adopt democracy, and while China struggles to move from economic liberalization to the rule of law, Europeans and Americans alike are frittering away the institutional inheritance of centuries. To arrest the degeneration of the West's once dominant civilization, Ferguson warns, will take heroic leadership and radical reform.

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Review:

Brilliantly written, full of wit and virtuosity, stuffed with memorable lines and gorgeous bits of information. A great read (The Times (on Civilization))

A dazzling history of Western ideas ... epic (Economist)

This is sharp. It feels urgent. Ferguson... twists his knife with great literary brio (Andrew Marr (on Civilization))

A masterpiece ... fascinating facts burst like fireworks on every page (Sunday Times)

Brings history alive for the reader with a dazzling knowledge ... peerless (Independent on Sunday)

About the Author:

Niall Ferguson is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has written fourteen books, including The House of Rothschild, Empire, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, The Great Degeneration and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. His many prizes include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013).

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