| Betting on Ideas: Wars, Invention, Inflation Contributor(s): Brenner, Reuven (Author) |
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ISBN: 0226074013 ISBN-13: 9780226074016 Publisher: University of Chicago Press OUR PRICE: $36.63 Product Type: Paperback Published: July 1989 Annotation: Betting On Ideas employs the same explanatory hypothesis advance in Brenner's 1983 book, History, The Human Gamble, but back it up with the evidence of war, inventions, inheritance laws, inflation, and indexation and urges some pragmatic applications. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Sociology - General - History |
| Dewey: 302 |
| LCCN: 85008750 |
| Series: Wars, Invention, Inflation |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 6.01" W x 8.98" (0.70 lbs) 255 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In this book, Reuven Brenner argues that people bet on new ideas and are more willing to take risks when they have been outdone by their fellows on local, national, or international scales. Such bets mean that people deviate from the beaten path and either gamble, commit crimes, or come up with new ideas in art, business, or politics, and ideas concerning war and peace in particular. By using evidence on gambling, crime, and creativity now and during the Industrial Revolution, by examining innovations in English and French inheritance laws and the emergence of welfare legislation, and by looking at what has happened before and after wars, Brenner reaches the conclusion that hope and fear, envy and vanity, sentiments provoked when being leapfrogged, make humans race. |
