1. Seven Ages of Globalization
2. The Paleolithic Age (70,000–10,000 BCE)
3. The Neolithic Age (10,000–3000 BCE)
4. The Equestrian Age (3000–1000 BCE)
5. The Classical Age (1000 BCE –1500 CE)
6. The Ocean Age (1500–1800)
7. The Industrial Age (1800–2000)
8. The Digital Age (Twenty-First Century)
9. Guiding Globalization in the Twenty-First Century
Acknowledgments
Data Appendix
Notes
Further Readings
Bibliography
Index
Jeffrey D. Sachs is University Professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is also director of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and has been advisor to three UN secretaries-general. He is a New York Times best-selling author, and his Columbia University Press books include The Age of Sustainable Development (2015), Building the New American Economy (2017), and A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2018).
Sachs has produced a masterpiece—its scope is breathtaking, its
insights stimulating, and its conceptual innovation pathbreaking.
For those seeking a story about where humanity has come from and is
going to, his book is a story with many lessons and hopes for the
future. At once clear-headed and opinionated, he provides a roadmap
for what we could and should do for our grandchildren. A wonderful
book.
*Gordon L. Clark, University of Oxford*
This romp through world history, by the famous economist Jeffrey
Sachs, summarizes most of what you really need to know about the
history of the last 70,000 years. Buy just this one book: it will
let you throw away dozens of specialized books that you already
own!
*Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of
Human Societies*
Understanding history can help steer the future, yet economic
history is too often missing from the economics curricula. Sachs
goes directly against this trend by providing a tour de force
historical account on how humans, technology, and nature have
interacted over the last 72,000 years! Key to the book’s message is
that while technological progress has been exponential, our ability
to benefit from it has always depended on the ways in which people
have chosen to organize themselves. Today this means that while
digital technologies provide endless possibilities, public policy
and corporate governance decisions are key to determining who
benefits. Sustainable and inclusive development will depend on our
concrete forms of democratic participation, ethical standards, and
the ability to create public spheres that allow us all to flourish.
A must-read!
*Mariana Mazzucato, University College London*
Sachs has produced a brilliant, yet remarkably short, book on the
biggest challenges now confronting humanity. He provides a
compelling account of how geography, technology, and institutions
have combined to shape globalization over 70,000 years, in seven
distinct ages. Then he explains what humanity now has to do if it
is to escape the environmental, social, and geopolitical calamities
that its own staggering successes have brought so close. This book
is essential reading.
*Martin Wolf, Chief Economics Commentator, Financial
Times*
As my special advisor on the Sustainable Development Goals, Jeffrey
Sachs consistently emphasized that the world can achieve
sustainable development only through bold and forward-looking
cooperation on a global scale. In his new panoramic history of
globalization, Sachs shows why the imperative of peaceful
cooperation is more crucial than ever. Our very survival as a
species requires that we understand our common fate. This book will
help us to reach that shared understanding.
*Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations*
The Ages of Globalization provides an unparalleled explanation of
human development. This lucidly written book is a must read for
anyone interested in how humanity has evolved and the root causes
of the challenges we face today. Jeff Sachs's magisterial and
engaging book provides profound perspectives on human history,
offering urgently needed insights to make sense of the present and
offer an essential guide to our future.
*Ian Goldin, author of Age of Discovery: Navigating the Storms
of Our Second Renaissance*
Economics is rediscovering historical perspectives, and thus its
own roots. The result, in Jeffrey Sachs’s masterful hands, is
eye-opening and refreshing. The Ages of Globalization is a tour de
force through many millennia of human history, discerning patterns
that help us understand in new ways our contemporary dilemmas.
While the story he tells provides many reasons to be pessimistic
about our future, Sachs also restores a sense of possibility with
his steadfast refusal to think in ahistorical categories and his
urgent plea to embrace the possibilities of the human condition. An
important and empowering book.
*Sven Beckert, coeditor of American Capitalism: New
Histories*
This dazzling book makes an invaluable contribution to the debate
about the future of globalization by brilliantly summarizing
humanity’s existential challenges and providing bold ideas for
ensuring our survival. Sachs makes a persuasive argument that
applying the concept of sustainable development must be today’s
essential mission. His thoughtful proposals for reforming key
international institutions, starting with the UN, merit particular
attention. The Ages of Globalization is required reading for our
times.
*Vuk Jeremić, former president of the United Nations General
Assembly*
In this erudite yet accessible book, Jeffrey D. Sachs traces the
history of modern humans from our migration from Africa some 70,000
years ago to today. In a pathbreaking account, he shows how
geography, technology, and institutions drive change. His analysis
is indispensable for understanding current global predicaments. A
tour de force.
*Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College*
As it comes from Jeffrey D. Sachs, I had expected this book to be
analytical, punchy, and readable, and so it is. But it is a
pleasure to be able to report that it is also a book by a superstar
economist that takes both history and geography seriously and that
allows the past, with all its complexities and contingencies, to
speak for itself. Impressively broad in both temporal and
geographical scope, this is a masterpiece of concision and a great
introduction to global economic history.
*Kevin O’Rourke, author of A Short History of Brexit: From
Brentry to Backstop*
At a time when the foundations of the world economic order are
being challenged, we must rely on the knowledge accumulated
throughout history to make wiser choices for the future of our
societies. In The Ages of Globalization, Jeffrey Sachs offers a
superb and unique historical and analytical framework for
understanding the process of globalization, highlighting its
dynamic nature and addressing its social and economic implications.
From the Paleolithic Age to the current digital age, this book
examines the interplay of geography, technology, and institutions
to achieve a comprehensive explanation of how globalization emerges
and evolves. Analysts, policy makers, social and political leaders,
interested citizens, and anyone concerned with the future of the
global economy can draw invaluable lessons from this book.
*Felipe Larraín B., former minister of finance of Chile*
The Ages of Globalization is not just a book for the modern
citizen. It is an essential survival kit for the twenty-first
century. At the same time that humanity was amassing wealth, it was
also creating the means of its own destruction. Now we are facing
forces none of us can counter alone, such as climate change and
environmental degradation. Sachs’s call for action resonates with
vigor and urgency. With this book, we can better explore, learn,
and act.
*Miroslav Lajčák, minister of foreign and European affairs of the
Slovak Republic*
Few scholars have the breadth of knowledge with which to cogently
weave insights from such wide-ranging fields such as agronomy,
economics, archaeology, anthropology, and engineering to recount
the layered story of how globalization and development unfolded. As
always, Sachs is a treat to read.
*Gordon McCord, University of California, San Diego*
An authoritative account of our “shared,” increasingly
interdependent human journey.
*Kirkus Reviews*
This masterful history of the human experience of global
interconnectedness begins in the Paleolithic Age and ends in
today’s COVID-19 pandemic. Sachs makes a powerful case that the
globalizing forces creating our increasingly interdependent world
are deeply rooted in the human condition and that they are
forces—for better and worse—that are here to stay.
*Foreign Affairs*
Sachs wears his own extensive reading lightly. He’s a very clear
writer, too, and the book has some lovely (colour) charts and
maps.
*The Enlightened Economist*
Sachs writes in simple, clean prose that most students and general
readers should find accessible. This is no small feat considering
the massiveness of the topics and the brevity of the book.
*Middle Ground Journal*
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