如今，全球纺织品和服装贸易额达到惊人的4250亿美元。在持续全球化的压力下，印度和中国成为新兴的世界制造强国。不过，这也并非新现象，在工业革命之前，亚洲就曾制造出大量色彩丰富印花的棉纺织品，远销日本、西非和欧洲。棉纺织品开辟了早期的全球化经济，1750年之后，随着棉纺织品引领欧洲的工业化进程，它也开启了全球化经济的转型。到19世纪早期，印度、中国和奥斯曼帝国从世界制造国转变为欧洲棉纺织品的购买国，而且在接下来的两个世纪中一直未能摆脱这种地位。本书以引人入胜、见解深刻的故事，讲述了亚洲和欧洲的技术、美洲棉花种植园中的非洲奴隶制度，以及全球消费者的愿望。

世界上最受人追捧的花朵及其掀起的非凡热潮的故事
在17世纪30年代，成千上万的荷兰人被卷入了一股近乎疯狂的交易热潮中。
他们之中既有腰缠万贯的富商，也有沿街叫卖的小贩。
他们投机的商品既不是石油，也不是黄金，而是刚刚从遥远的东方引入荷兰的一种充满异国情调的、精妙雅致的花朵——郁金香。
在三年多的时间里，稀有郁金香球根的交易价格甚至可以超过一栋阿姆斯特丹的房产。
很多人一夜暴富，但是财富来得快去得也快。
郁金香市场从顶峰到彻底崩溃只用了不到一年，给参与者带来了灾难性的后果。
本书作者迈克•达什通过追溯这场不可抑制的繁盛和接踵而至的毁灭性的崩盘，优美得呈现了荷兰共和国的黄金时代风貌。
（达什）凭借其讲故事一般的生动文笔，让读者仿佛置身于一个喧哗燥热、烟雾缭绕的哈勒姆酒馆……本书无愧于对郁金香这种非凡花朵的一次华丽的致敬。
——《泰晤士报文学增刊》
一次对人性中的贪婪无度和自欺妄想的迷人探索，同时也为人们永无止境地追求美好事物而致敬。一部让人不忍释卷的作品。
——德博拉•莫盖茨
扣人心弦……丰富有趣的细节描写。
—— 《卫报》

Although political and legal institutions are essential to any nation's economic development, the forces that have shaped these institutions are poorly understood. Drawing on rich evidence about the development of the American states from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, this book documents the mechanisms through which geographical and historical conditions--such as climate, access to water transportation, and early legal systems--impacted political and judicial institutions and economic growth.
The book shows how a state's geography and climate influenced whether elites based their wealth in agriculture or trade. States with more occupationally diverse elites in 1860 had greater levels of political competition in their legislature from 1866 to 2000. The book also examines the effects of early legal systems. Because of their colonial history, thirteen states had an operational civil-law legal system prior to statehood. All of these states except Louisiana would later adopt common law. By the late eighteenth century, the two legal systems differed in their balances of power. In civil-law systems, judiciaries were subordinate to legislatures, whereas in common-law systems, the two were more equal. Former civil-law states and common-law states exhibit persistent differences in the structure of their courts, the retention of judges, and judicial budgets. Moreover, changes in court structures, retention procedures, and budgets occur under very different conditions in civil-law and common-law states.
The Evolution of a Nation illustrates how initial geographical and historical conditions can determine the evolution of political and legal institutions and long-run growth.

How did today's rich states first establish modern fiscal systems? To answer this question, Political Transformations and Public Finances by Mark Dincecco examines the evolution of political regimes and public finances in Europe over the long term. The book argues that the emergence of efficient fiscal institutions was the result of two fundamental political transformations that resolved long-standing problems of fiscal fragmentation and absolutism. States gained tax force through fiscal centralization and restricted ruler power through parliamentary limits, which enabled them to gather large tax revenues and channel funds toward public services with positive economic benefits. Using a novel combination of descriptive, case study and statistical methods, the book pursues this argument through a systematic investigation of a new panel database that spans eleven countries and four centuries. The book's findings are significant for our understanding of economic history and have important consequences for current policy debates.