Landmark Books in All Fields
ItemID: #122753
Cost: $1,250.00

Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution

Thorstein Veblen

"THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM OF DOMINION, STATECRAFT AND WARLIKE ENTERPRISE NECESSARILY RESTS ON THE MODERN MECHANISTIC SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY"

VEBLEN, Thorstein. Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1915. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $1250.

First edition of this important World War I-era economic examination of Germany and its industry.

Veblen was a distinguished American economist and social scientist who believed that economics was a progressive, developing system, particularly when examined through a dynamic, historical lens. "The outbreak of World War I deepened Veblen's pessimism for the prospects of the human race. In Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915), he suggested that Germany had an advantage over democratic states such as the United Kingdom and France because its autocracy was better able to channel the gains of modern technology toward the service of the state. He conceded that the advantage was only temporary, however, because the German economy would eventually develop its own system of conspicuous waste" (Britannica). "I do not remember ever to have found in any modern book of sociology more interest and stimulus than in this new work of Professor Veblen's. The "unexpected" quality of his mind, his power of using exact knowledge in the field of archaeology for fresh suggestion in the field of economics, and his trenchant irony, all make one desire to give him the old-fashioned name of 'genius'" (contemporary review, Quarterly Journal of Economics). With publisher's advertisements. Contemporary pencil date.

Book about-fine, dust jacket very good with a few spots of staining, a bit of wear and toning to extremities, and some tape repair to verso. An attractive copy.

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