Economics Homework Help. George Mason University Rulers, Religion, and Riches Book Analysis
You must choose two books from the
list below. You will write an essay describing how these books relate to the themes we discussed
in class. The paper should start with an introduction that lays out what books you have chosen
and briefly describes their main hypotheses. You should then spend a significant portion of the
paper overviewing the main arguments of the books. Please explain what the arguments are and
how the author(s) substantiate the arguments. Importantly, you must then discuss how do these
arguments relate to the material we’ve covered in class? Finally, evaluate whether the books you
chose complement each other or are they critiques?
The paper should be typed in a reasonable font. Double spaced with reasonable margins. The
paper should be around 15 pages (but this is only a guideline). The paper is due on Friday, July
23 at 5 pm EST. I will only accept pdf ’s emailed to me. The subject line of your email
should be “EH Essay” and the name of the essay pdf should be “your last name EH
Essay”.. For every 24 hours the paper is late, your paper grade will be reduced by one half of a
letter grade (i.e. 5%).
1. Timur Kuran. The long divergence: How Islamic law held back the Middle East. Princeton
University Press, 2012
2. Deirdre N McCloskey. The bourgeois virtues: Ethics for an age of commerce. University of
Chicago Press, 2010
3. Kenneth Pomeranz. The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern
world economy, volume 28. Princeton University Press, 2009
4. Philip T Hoffman. Why did Europe conquer the world? Princeton University Press, 2017
5. Walter Scheidel. The great leveler: Violence and the history of inequality from the stone age
to the twenty-first century. Princeton University Press, 2018
6. Robert C Allen. The British industrial revolution in global perspective. Cambridge University
Press, 2009
7. Joel Mokyr. The Enlightened economy an economic history of Britain 1700-1850. Yale
University Press, 2010
8. Jared Rubin. Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West got rich and the Middle East did
not. Cambridge University Press, 2017
9. Noel D Johnson and Mark Koyama. Persecution & toleration: The long road to religious
freedom. Cambridge University Press, 2019
10. Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson. The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the
Fate of Liberty. Penguin Press, 2019
11. Douglass C North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R Weingast. Violence and social orders: A
conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. Cambridge University Press,
2009
12. Jared M Diamond. Guns, germs and steel: a short history of everybody for the last 13,000
years. Random House, 1998
Some Topics that we discussed in the class:
1. The Black Death and It’s Consequences
2.Trade and Exchange
3. Institutions and Constitution
4. Colonialism as a Natural Experiment
5. Health & Infrastructure
