The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History
- Book Review,
by David Hackett Fischer
Amazon.com
David Hackett Fischer is a master storyteller, capable of writing challenging histories in highly enjoyable prose. His earlier works, Albion's Seed and Paul Revere's Ride, have both been hailed for their extraordinary success as both scholarly achievements and readable histories. In The Great Wave, Professor Fischer directs his erudite attention to the ebbs and flows of prices, demonstrating that the historical costs of goods shed much light on patterns of human events, and the interpretation of those prices in turn discloses a great deal about the methods and biases of historians. The result is an intriguing study of both human history and a critical appraisal of the historian's craft. The greatest talent Fischer demonstrates is the ability to master a diverse amount of quantitative data and organize it into a remarkably clear story. Certain to interest lay readers, investors, and serious students alike, The Great Wave changes the way you look at those common signposts known as prices.
From Library Journal
Fischer (Paul Revere's Ride, LJ 4/1/94) turns to economic concerns in this informative and readable history of price revolutions. The first revolution of which we have adequate record occurred in the 13th century: it coincided with the onslaught of the Black Death and put an end to the forward movement and optimism of the High Middle Ages. Later price crises coincided with devastating religious wars and social unrest in the 17th century, revolutions at the end of the 18th century, and the Great Depression and the horrors of totalitarianism of our own century. Today, we face another devastating wave of inflation: "after 1975...ratios of wealth inequality reached their highest levels in four centuries of American history....The principal victims [are]...the young people who ha[ve] no hope for the future and no memory of better times in the past. The result [is] a rapid growth of alienation, anomie, confusion, and despair." Fischer combines a lively narrative with cogent analysis and sound advice. Essential for scholarly collections, this fine book will also be appreciated by lay readers.?David Keymer, California State Univ., Stanislaus, Calif.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Thomas J. Archdeacon
David Hackett Fischer once again challenges conventional ways of looking at the world as he critically comments on historical method. Like Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, The Great Wave puts the present day in a historical perspective encompassing many centuries.... Whether or not Mr. Fischer's analyses are complete and correct is not especially important. He has described the past in ways that inspire interesting questions and offer novel insights into our condition. Can a historian make a finer contribution?
From Booklist
Fischer, a Brandeis history professor, is already author of two acclaimed "history books." Both Albion's Seed (1989) and Paul Revere's Ride (1994) have been praised for their originality, analytical clarity, and vivid style. Although this latest book is somewhat more academic, Fischer now follows suit with a look at the relation between prices and massive social change. It is easy to correlate a change in the price of a commodity with a specific event (e. g., the Persian Gulf War and oil prices), and some economic theorists have long suggested that economic events are cyclic. But in Fischer's discerning analysis there have been four great price revolutions in Western history, and each one began in a period of equilibrium (the high Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Victorian age) and was followed by inflation, growing disparity between the rich and the poor, and social and political instability. His absorbing narrative analysis is accompanied by dozens of clearly presented charts and graphs; his notes and a bibliographic essay add nearly 200 pages to the text. David Rouse
Book Description
David Hackett Fischer has gained a reputation for making History come alive--even stories as familiar as Paul Reveres ride or as complex as the transit of British culture to America. Now he has done it again in The Great Wave, a history of price movements and cultural change from the middle ages to the present. Fischer examines price records in many nations, and finds our great waves of rising prices in the thirteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries. All were marked by price swings of increasing volatility, falling real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, and an increase in violent crime, family disintegration, and cultural despair. Each long wave reached its climax in a period of political revolution, demographic contraction, and economic collapse. Every crisis was followed by sharp deflation, and then by a long era of price equilibrium, rising real wages, falling returns to capital, growing equality, and accelerating population-growth. Aggregate demand increased, and another wave began. Fischer concludes that we are living in the late stages of the twentieth century price revolution. He does not predict what will happen next. Rather, he ends with an analysis of where we might go from here, and what our choices are now.
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