Starts well. Explores social mobility. Can birth alone determine your future social status? Is the American dream which says you can be whatever you like a myth at least partially? He does an interesting analysis by just surnames and discovers that the social mobility is very small, much smaller than you would think or want to believe. The discussions are fascinating. He argues that this is not a pessimistic view, since if you elongate the timeframe to about 300 years, the deck gets shuffled and everyone reverts to the mean. In the end, even within the dynasties, it is the ability and not the money that matters.
What starts promisingly thus descends into analysis of percentages that never ends and you rapidly lose interest and consider it one of the most boring books you have read. Interminable statistics about the same point over and over and you feel even more tired than watching the family videos of a distant acquaintance when forced to sit on their house and watch for half a day.
He moves painfully from Sweden to the US. More of the same blather. The one short piece that holds your interest is how the surnames in Medieval England originated. We of course know that Baker, Carpenter, Smith, Clark, Cook, Butler are all based on professions that became surnames (in the thirteenth century, this book tells us). But I had not thought of Chamberlain, Carter, Shepherd, Ploughman, Thresher and Wright came from the same. Some are even more obscure, the textile industry professions gave the surnames Webber and Webster (for weavers), Skinner, Tanner and even Glover (from the leather trade), Barker (from textile as well), Coward (a corruption of cowherd), Baxter (from Baker) and Dexter (from Dyer). The elites, who moved from their native cities to the royal court took the cities as surnames and hence we have now Montgomery, Holland, Kent etc.
And you learn that the surname Spencer really comes from dispenser and Clark or Clarke comes from cleric.
After that brief illuminating discussion, it sinks back into the same analysis but with Medieval English times.
He also says that Old Sarum in 1831 had a population of 7 and an electorate of 4. 152 out of 406 MPs were elected by fewer than one hundred voters. (they were called the rotten boroughs). In other words, a handful of people wielded political power through representatives out of all proportion to their numbers until it was reformed shortly after 1830s.
Then the author says “OK I will explain why my theory works always as opposed to other studies that show a greater variation” . You sit up and say, “At last! We will get to know the theory instead of interminable examples proving the same in excruciating detail”. He then disappoints by giving an equation like y = bx + c and explaining what the constants b and c are and therefore why this rate is the same! You go ‘Serves me right for expecting something, in spite of my experience so far.’
More blather about how educational help to children does not seem to boost the level of change.
There are some interesting thoughts in the book. For instance, he describes how when we track the descendents of Charles Darwin, who expounded the theory of the survival of the fittest, we sees his own progeny dwindling from generation to generation!
There is also firm evidence that affirmative action or the equivalent reservation system has not produced any improvement in the plight of the disadvantaged, no matter what the government does. Well, it does, but nowhere near the effect that was sought. But you have to sit through a lot of dross that sounds like a research analytics in detail to get at these nuggets.
A couple of interesting facts emerge. Why are Coptic Christians, a religious minority, in elite status in Egypt? Because, all the poorer people, unable to pay the tax to practice other religions, converted to Islam, leaving the elite in place, who were richer. Given the persistent rates of social immobility, this persists to the present day. Similarly, the explanation of how a handful of Ashkenazi Jews in the earlier centuries became so populous and elite. Interesting vignettes indeed.
But the book is mostly dross and I cannot in all honesty, as a lay reader, give it more than 3/ 10
– – Krishna
bookspluslife 