Lesson never Learned
I am not a historian, but reading this book was my first step to educate myself to be more liberal, wise and insightful into the world affairs to which we are all exposed. We cannot hope to understand the present, contends Woodruff, without knowing about the past.
It is a history of the past 500 years, of the ascendancy of the West over the older empires of the East, and of the resurgence of Asia when the world pendulum is swinging back towards the East. Sailing through the myriad of accounts of the past, you'll find that the use and abuse of the crucial element of statecraft - power underlies almost all the stories of glory or shame. This book is a portrait of that power and how it has shaped our contemporary world.
Economics and politics are never separated. If money cannot get you the answer you want, turn to power politics and human nature. There, you will find the missing piece, something that many of us (incl. me) did not have the chance to delve into either due to our incomplete upbringings or lack of time and interest once we grew up.
I can't remember whether it was Benjamin Graham or his protégé Warren Buffet (or perhaps somebody else) who said this: What we have learned from history is that people never learned from history.
