Without Peer

All the text that's fit to squint.

If the opening line of a book review is

Tyler Cowen’s e-book, “The Great Stagnation,” has become the most debated nonfiction book so far this year

then one almost has to buy the book, especially if it costs only $3.99. But note the "e-" modifier.

I don't have an iPad, so I had to download the book onto my iPhone. This was my first purchase using Amazon's iPhone Kindle app. The process was quick, but the reading is not. No speed-reader, I am nevertheless used to taking in larger blocks of data when I read. When reading non-fiction I like to glance down the page to see where the writer's argument is going.

Reading a book on the iPhone is akin to watching text dribble out of an old teletype machine. It .... just .... takes .... so .... long.

As for the book, I'm a third of the way through. Dr. Cowen argues that the rise of the United States until about 1970 was due to harvesting the low-hanging fruit of free land, exploiting known technologies (e.g. electricity, railroads), and educating a largely uneducated but very motivated populace. America's slower growth since then is due to the fact that we've run out of easy pickings.

I may post on the book again if its conclusions and/or prescriptions prove interesting. What I do know is that I'd rather be living today in the good old USA than at any other time or place in human history.