Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson's book Why Some Countries Are Rich and Others Are Poor is one of the major political economic bestsellers of recent times, a landmark work comparable in importance to the works of Samuel Huntington, Jared Diamond, or Francis Fukuyama. The authors ask a question that has worried historians, economists, and philosophers for centuries: what are the sources of global inequality, and why is global wealth distributed so unevenly across countries and regions of the world? The answer to this question is given at the intersection of history, political science, and economics, with the involvement of unusually extensive historical material from all eras and from all continents, which turns the book into a real encyclopedia of advanced political and economic thought.
