The essays in this book survey entrepreneurship through history and around the world. William Baumol opens the discussion by articulating three hypotheses in the book's preface. Entrepreneurs are needed to transform inventions into productivity gains. Entrepreneurs, however, vary in the aims of their activities from increasing productivity to rent seeking, and this variation is affected by the societies in which they live. David Landes provides an instant summary of world history in his introduction illustrating these themes but without much discussion of entrepreneurs. The combination reveals the great skill of these distinguished editors and the chief problem with this book.

We all like to have people in our stories, and a focus on entrepreneurship justifies that kind of great-man history. But we also know that impersonal factors such as good government, secure property rights, literacy, and factor prices are important in economic growth. These factors are mentioned in the essays, and people are described when enough records survive to identify them. The problem is whether these factors or entrepreneurs are the more important part of these stories. Are the underlying factors exogenous and entrepreneurship endogenous? Baumol and Landes appear to support this view by respectively citing societal influences on entrepreneurs and by ignoring individuals in the fates of nations. If we agree, then are the following stories of great men only the froth on the surface of history as Leo Tolstoy asserted?

The essays in this volume overwhelmingly support the view that entrepreneurship is endogenous. The chapters trace the economic history of Europe in the early modern period, expanding the story to the United States and Asia after the Industrial Revolution. Only five of 18 chapters discuss individual entrepreneurs in any detail, recounting their roles and decisions over time. Most of the chapters survey the literature on various times and places with emphasis on the legal and other institutional framework for economic development. They express this argument with an almost obsessive use of the words entrepreneur and entrepreneurship as if the addition of these terms added weight to their arguments. Joel Mokyr (p. 202) provides a succinct summary of this view when he says, “the topic of entrepreneurship needs to be studied … by looking at cultural and institutional factors.”

Although Baumol stated that entrepreneurs could be rent seekers in appropriate conditions, none of the authors follow his lead. Hitler and Stalin, for example, made major, irreversible decisions and took great risks—signs of entrepreneurship noted by several authors—but we do not classify them as entrepreneurs in general discussion. Both of these leaders generated economic growth, but failed to stimulate innovative activity. The instructions given to the contributors in this volume appear to have indicated that the essays should concentrate on the private economy and take political actions as exogenous. Perhaps that is why individuals seem to be endogenous in these stories rather than important independent agents.

Four chapters provide a short history of the successful economies of the past two centuries in England, America, and China that could initiate a consideration of how and when societies produce productive entrepreneurs. John Munro argues (p. 135) that British entrepreneurship arose in “1640–1740, that is, from the Civil War era, the Puritan ascendancy, to the eve of the Industrial Revolution.” He describes a heady mix of politics, religion, and conflict that changed—in mysterious ways—the way individuals thought. Mokyr discusses the networks of gentlemen during the Industrial Revolution, extending Munro's argument and stressing the emerging communities of entrepreneurs. The argument is intriguing, although it lacks direct connection to the innovations of the Industrial Revolution. Naomi Lamoreaux's narrative of the processes of invention, expansion, and business formation in the late-nineteenth-century United States lauds the public policies that created the environment for this economic growth. Wellington Chan again stresses the importance of networks in his account of China's recent growth and checkered previous history. I recommend these essays to readers curious about how entrepreneurs actually conduct their affairs.

Two quibbles. First, the editors chose to frame their main narrative with two stories about the ancient world at the start and two on China and Japan at the end. Alas, the opening essay by Michael Hudson shows that the author is not up to date on the literature on the classical period. He missed the opportunity to extol the virtues of entrepreneurship in the prosperous economy of the Roman Empire. Second, the publisher chose to bind this book in coffee table format, larger than standard monograph size. The result is a coffee-table book with no pictures!