Name: Escape from Rome
ISBN: 9780691216737

Escape from Rome

"In this book, Walter Scheidel provides a unique take on the perennial debates about the rise of the west. His main argument is straightforward and provocative: the fact that nothing like the Roman Empire ever again emerged in Europe was a crucial precondition for modern economic growth, the Industrial Revolution and worldwide conquest much later on. Contra Ken Pomeranz's classic thesis about the "Great Divergence" of the 18th/19th centuries when northwestern Europe pulled away from China and the rest of world in terms of economic performance and overall power, Scheidel argues there was a much more significant "first great divergence" in late antiquity which set the stage. Scheidel argues that it wasn't until the West "escaped" from the dominance of the Roman empire did it flourish economically (unlike China, comparison which will be explored in this book, which despite transformations and setbacks remained a "universal empire" for much of it's 2,200 year history). Scheidel approaches this "first great divergence" via a new take on some central question concerning the life and fate of the Roman Empire: How did the Roman Empire come into existence - did its rise depend on unique conditions that were never repeated later on? Was its fall inevitable? Why was nothing like the Roman Empire ever rebuilt? And did this matter for (much) later developments?

What Hacker News says

beezlebroxxxxxxMay 2024

There is a great recent book on the Roman Empire's unique role in European history and why no other power in the region could matching it after "the fall" was, eventually, something that worked out in Europe's favour.

It's called: "Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity"

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172187/es...

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rufus_foremanDec 2023

Recommended:

Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer. Fiction? Non-fiction?

Had to be made up. A guy born in England to poor circumstances ships out to New Orleans, jumps ship, fights in the Civil War on the confederate side, gets captured, fights in the Civil War on the union side, gets wounded, ends up fighting in the union navy. After the war, becomes a journalist in the American west. Then organizes an expedition to the Ottoman empire...OK he's 26 years old at this point. Sure there's some stuff later but...that's a pretty good resume for a 26 year old. Unbelievable.

Lou Reed: The King of New York Same thing. Just completely real but also unbelievable. The songs he had written by 1965.

Hitler: A Biography, by Ian Kershaw. Completely real, also unbelievable. The German people voting against democracy. Unbelievable.

Escape From Rome, Walter Scheidel, "The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern world". I think about the Roman Empire a lot, so basically it was a military slave state and it fell and that's bad?

The Great Depression: A Diary, I thought I would hate this, let's read a diary, right? Reading a diary of the Great Depression happening in front of you, it's amazing. The dread, and the bargaining. He's like bargaining against reality that the depression will end.

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KeyshJan 2023

The Roman historian Walter Scheidel has a whole book (Escape from Rome) on this question -- basically, exploring the idea that Europe never really reformed a large-scale empire after the Roman Empire started to fall apart in the 5th C, whereas other parts of Eurasia (esp. China) did go through periods of reforming large-scale empires, sometimes larger than past empires in the same region.

Unfortunately, I'm only about halfway through it, so I haven't gotten to the part where he tries to explain why this happened. But so far, it's quite good.

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madhadronDec 2020

> I sometimes have this thought at the back of my mind about using the same reading time for books instead.

This implies that books are inherently superior. But sometimes the author's content isn't a book length. (I see this a lot in books from Harvard Business Review where what is really called for is a dense article, but that doesn't put a book on the author's resume.)

Some arguments are intrinsically long. Building up an understanding of thermodynamics (not just a summary of its formulation) is certainly book length. Scheidel's 'Escape from Rome' is not going to fit into an article.

So I don't really balance. Sometimes I have a big book in flight and that's going to take a lot of my attention. Sometimes I don't, but I have a number of interesting articles. I aim to optimize the enrichment I get instead.

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