Escape from Rome
Review
"Escape from Rome presents a fascinating account of why modernity appeared first in Western Europe―it was precisely the failure of the Roman project and not its legacy that allowed the emergence of a decentralized and competitive system that became the ultimate platform for modern economic growth. A challenging and counterintuitive hypothesis."―Francis Fukuyama, author o...
Review
"Escape from Rome presents a fascinating account of why modernity appeared first in Western Europe―it was precisely the failure of the Roman project and not its legacy that allowed the emergence of a decentralized and competitive system that became the ultimate platform for modern economic growth. A challenging and counterintuitive hypothesis."―Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man
"If a new Roman Empire had appeared in medieval Europe, it would have aborted modernity and everything would be different today! This is the remarkable, but tightly argued, conclusion of Walter Scheidel's virtuoso exploration of counterfactual world histories."―David Christian, author of Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History
"In a masterpiece of global history spanning over two millennia, Walter Scheidel tells us why western Europe remained politically fragmented after the collapse of Rome, why the rest of the world gravitated toward empire, and why that enduring political contrast explains the origins of sustained economic growth. A fascinating book."―Philip T. Hoffman, author of Why Did Europe Conquer the World?
"Escape from Rome is a brilliant and very important book by a great scholar at the top of his powers. This is a wholly convincing and innovative account, logically driven and based on stunning scholarship. It will become a classic."―John A. Hall, coauthor of The Paradox of Vulnerability: States, Nationalism, and the Financial Crisis
"Astonishingly learned, hugely ambitious, and deeply thoughtful, the indefatigable Walter Scheidel has written another innovative and provocative book that will turn global history upside down."―Joel Mokyr, author of A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy
"Lucid and provocative, this book makes an iconoclastic case for why Europe's luckiest break was losing its only internal empire. A must-read for anyone curious about the long shadow of Rome."―Sheilagh Ogilvie, author of The European Guilds: An Economic Analysis
Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. His many books include The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton). He lives in Palo Alto, California. Twitter @WalterScheidel