Ideology and the Evolution of Vital Institutions: Guilds, The Gold Standard, and Modern International Cooperation

In this book, Thompson and Hickson strongly challenge the standard interpretation of the basis of growth and viability of dominant wealthy nations. Briefly, efforts of the economically wealthy and the government leaders to increase their wealth and protect it from aggressors, internal and external, are cast in a new evolutionary light. The challenge is to the idea that societies leading intellectual formulators of political and social policy have been helpful. Their alternative, and persuas...