To the matter of fact, I am deeply impressed by the effort he tries to find out what is special about Western civilisation and Japan, i.e. why Japan and the West got rich while the rest of the world lagged behind, and most of it still does. David doesn't pull his punches as his approach is neoclassicist, although hardly a dogmatic one. He is rough on Postmodernists, French and Japanese protectionists, Spanish Roman Catholics, and many others. Hence I believe David might irritate Catholics, third world enthusiasts, anti-Western intellectuals, extreme right wing Capitalists, anti-Japanese, and so on, and so on.
In brief, this book focuses on three major reasons for Wealth/Poverty, i.e. Geography, Infrastructure, and Culture. The discussion of Geography, early in the book, is at best half hearted. Some of the points seem valid, there are really fewer diseases in Europe than in Africa as the black death annihilated a third of the European population in the 13th century. It was Heat that makes labour harder and less efficient. I believe the best parts of the book deal with Infrastructure. In these, David has three main themes, i.e. Freedom, Capitalism and Science. The Third Element is culture, David repeatedly attacks economists for discounting culture, for instance, in the last chapter, page 517 in my edition. He claims that they disregard it because it can't be quantified.
This book is slightly pro-Western, at times a bit dense, but with enough anecdotal evidence to keep the reader interested. I believe David does a thorough job supporting his claims and covers broad topics in this treatment of the study of economic history.
