Stearns has written here a very broad description of how the industrial revolution evolved, or failed to evolve, in many countries over the last two centuries. This is a very big task, and has no well defined beginning or end, nor even very many milestones. Moreover, there are, according to Stearns, nearly as many paths to development as there are countries that develop. No tipping points, no critical inventions and no heroic personalities either. While I suppose there is a certain truth to this point of view, and may even be historically accurate, it makes for a somewhat dull read. I prefer to have my history laced with a few gee-whizes accomplished by some impossibly heroic figures. But that's just me.

His recitation of the changes that took place is almost formless, without generalities, or even much definition. While it was certainly humbling to contemplate the breadth of his scholarship, I didn't get what I was looking for out of this work--some hypotheses or possible explanations for what happened. I appreciate the difficulty of the problem and the mystery of ultimate historical causation, but the author would have been better off, I think, if he had taken a little stab at it, at least.

The book has four maps and a dozen or so illustrations, but only five graphs--and most of those are ridiculously parsimonious in the amount of data shown. Surely in a subject of this scope, tables and better graphs would have helped to organize it.

Despite these shortcomings, I think the book is a worthwhile contribution to the history of a very important part of the human story, and I'm glad to have read it. ( )