Jason W. Moore

Its unusual that a 200 page book spends 40 pages on the Introduction, and after that introduction, usefully focused on the island of Madeira as a case study though it is, you feel as though you have the general idea, And the conclusions are hard to argue with; yes capitalism has succeeded through cheapening most elements of life - although I might dispute the conclusions around the cheapening of care. Yes, care and work in the home is undervalued but its hard to quantify that value when noone outside a particular home cares whether that work is done or not

But in general its very easy to agree with the authors' well argued case. But its less clear what, if anything can be done about it. For me the leap between the Marxist analysis of the problem and the World-Ecology basis of the solution was too great; for me the problem, or the history, was absorbing but the solution was unclear and unconvinving… (mere)