The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy

by Daniel Yergin, Joseph Stanislaw

The Commanding Heights is about the most powerful political and economic force in the world today -- the epic struggle between government and the marketplace that has, over the last twenty years, turned the world upside down and dramatically transformed our lives. Now, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Prize joins with a leading expert on the new marketplace to explain the revolution in ideas that is reshaping the modern world. Written with the same sweeping narrative power that made The Prize an enormous success, The Commanding Heights provides the historical perspective, the global vision, and the insight to help us understand the tumult of the past half century. Trillions of dollars in assets and fundamental political power are changing hands as free markets wrest control from government of the "commanding heights" -- the dominant businesses and industries of the world economy. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw demonstrate that words like "privatization" and "deregulation" are inadequate to describe the enormous upheaval that is unfolding before our eyes. Along with the creation of vast new wealth, the map of the global economy is being redrawn. Indeed, the very structure of society is changing. New markets and new opportunities have brought great new risks as well. How has all this come about? Who are the major figures behind it? How does it affect our lives? The collapse of the Soviet Union, the awesome rise of China, the awakening of India, economic revival in Latin America, the march toward the European Union -- all are a part of this political and economic revolution. Fiscal realities and financial markets are relentlessly propelling deregulation; achieving a new balance between government and marketplace will be the major political challenge in the coming years. Looking back, the authors describe how the old balance was overturned, and by whom. Looking forward, they explore these Will the new balance prevail? Or does the free market contain the seeds of its own destruction? Will there be a backlash against any excesses of the free market? And finally, The Commanding Heights illuminates the five tests by which the success or failure of all these changes can be measured, and defines the key issues as we enter the twenty-first century. The Commanding Heights captures this revolution in ideas in riveting accounts of the history and the politics of the postwar years and compelling tales of the astute politicians, brilliant thinkers, and tenacious businessmen who brought these changes about. Margaret Thatcher, Donald Reagan, Deng Xiaoping, and Bill Clinton share the stage with the "Minister of Thought" Keith Joseph, the broommaker's son Domingo Cavallo, and Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian economist who was determined to win the twenty-year "battle of ideas." It is a complex and wide-ranging story, and the authors tell it brilliantly, with a deep understanding of human character, making critically important ideas lucid and accessible. Written with unique access to many of the key players, The Commanding Heights, like no other book, brings us an understanding of the last half of the twentieth century -- and sheds a powerful light on what lies ahead in the twenty-first century.

Genres: Economics, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Business, Finance, World History

512 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Daniel Yergin is the author of the new bestseller The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World which has been hailed as “a fascinating saga” about the “quest for sustainable resources of energy,” and “the book you must read to understand the future of our economy and our way of life,” not to mention “necessary reading for C.E.O.’s, conservationists, lawmakers, generals, spies, tech geeks, thriller writers. . . and many others.”

He received the Pulitzer Prize for The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil Money and Power, which became a number one New York Times best seller and has been translated into 17 languages.

Dr. Yergin is Vice Chairman of IHS and Founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and serves as CNBC’s Global Energy Expert.

Other books by Dr. Yergin include Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy. Dr. Yergin has also written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, and many other publications.

Both The Prize and Commanding Heights were made into award winning documentaries. The eight-hour miniseries The Prize was aired on PBS, BBC, and NHK and viewed by 20 million viewers in the United States alone. The 6-hour documentary Commanding Heights that Dr. Yergin produced received three Emmy nominations, and the New York Festivals Gold World Medal for best documentary.

Dr. Yergin serves on the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board and chaired the US Department of Energy’s Task Force on Strategic Energy Research and Development. He is a Trustee of the Brookings Institution, on the Board of the New America Foundation, and on the Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative.

Dr. Yergin holds a BA from Yale University and a PhD from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

Reviews

[Szplug · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Anti-Shock Doctrine—Yergin runs through many of the same market-transition scenarios that Klein examined in her more recent book, concluding that this trend has been, overall, a very positive and necessary thing. A brief assessment of the Liberal Consensus developed subsequent to the Second World War and carried forward into the late seventies—when a mixture of centralized government economic management, high commodity (read oil) prices, rampant inflation, persistent unemployment, and runaway union confrontations and shutdowns had rendered the world one vast puddle of stagnant economic water—sets the stage for the main event: enter the miracle of Hayekian/Friedmanite Market freedoms—tested in Chile, tinkered with in Indonesia, and then applied, more or less, in the First World through the iconic leadership of Thatcher (whose mentor Sir Keith Joseph gets a fair bit of screen time) and Reagan—and the great benefits of entrepreneurial dynamism, deregulation and privatization, union taming, free trade, and low taxes began to work their global magic. Yergin—a clear but sere writer—brings out the analytic lens to such additional locales as Bolivia, India, Poland, and, in the most fascinating case, that of China's unique evolution towards a Communist-Capitalist hybrid, a development directed by the patient hand of a perseverant Deng Xiaoping. Yergin is intellectually honest enough not to elide the inevitable problems and hiccups that accompanied this radical transformation—though he treats of them comparatively briefly—and his enthusiasm eventually proves contagious (for this reader, at any rate). It is likely that if you read both Yergin's and Klein's (better written and equally convincing) opposing viewpoints, your understanding of the turn towards Free Market Globalism over the past three decades will be that much sounder.

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1922, a year after putting the New Economic Policy in place, Lenin defended letting some small market activity proliferate, declaring that the state would still control the "commanding heights" of the economy. The authors of this book show how the opposite is true today (writing between 1998 and 2008). In the battle between governments and markets, markets have won, all over the world. Globalization has won. All of this is to society's benefit, they say. "Mistrust" of the market now "sounds archaic." The Chicago School of economics (Hayek, Friedman, Stigler, Becker) helped it all happen.

The chapters on economic developments in Asia, Latin America, and India were very informative, and well done. The discussion of Thatcher's Britain fell somewhat flat. Only two of the fourteen chapters concern the U.S. specifically and they suffer from too tight a focus on a number of narrow topics (e.g., the deregulation of AT&T), rather than a broader overview. A subsection criticizing the explosion of "rights" - affirmative action, civil litigation brought by employees in the workplace, etc. - seems both off-topic and mean-spirited.

The book is not just extremely one-sided, but also very top-down. It is odd in a book about markets and globalization that labor is so rarely mentioned. One of the largest consequences of both globalization and the ascendancy of markets is the cheapness of labor. This fact is not mentioned at all by the authors. Nor is wealth and income equality, except for a scarce few words near the end. When the authors ever so briefly suggest that social safety nets are needed to help people adjust to globalization, it comes across as an afterthought, crumbs tossed. When they mention that surging numbers of unemployed and underemployed young men in developing countries create "a combustible mix of idleness, poverty, disillusionment, and a bitterness that can be a tremendous source of political and economic instability that spills over borders," you want to inform them that this is not just happening in other places - check out America. Luttwak (see below) did check out America, and he did find bitter young black men there and wrote incisively about them.

For a much more balanced look at markets and governments, read Politics and Markets : The World's Political-Economic Systems by Charles E. Lindblom. For the other side of what Yergin and Stanislaw present here, check out Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy by Edward N. Luttwak, a book which lucidly discusses the catastrophic consequences of labor being so incredibly cheap. The central question in Luttwak's book is: should markets exist for the benefit of societies, or should societies exist for the benefit of markets? Yergin and Stanislaw would sidestep the question. The market has a Smithian "essential morality" for them. As you and I, and Enron and Google, Volkswagen and Cargill, ExxonMobil and Monsanto, Uber and the Trump Organization, all pursue our self-interest, all of society is made better as a result.

[DoctorM · Rating 3 out of 5]

This should be read in tandem with Klein's "The Shock Doctrine", though I'm not quite sure which is the antidote to the other. "Commanding Heights" first appeared in 1998, and it was written in the mid-90s "End of History" era where market capitalism was triumphant, where "neoliberal" was still a good term, and globalisation was the wave of the future.

The enthusiasm for the brave new free-market world seems so utterly dated now after the global meltdown of 2008 and the retreat of much of the world from free-market fantasies. But it's well worth reading Yergin's early chapters to get a sense of the economic stagnation of the late '70s and the failures of socialist systems that made Chicago economics and Thatcherism seem fresh and hopeful and vital.

"Commanding Heights" isn't a bad intro to economic policies over the last 30 years, and if it leads you to looking at Jos. Stiglitz and Dani Rodrick's later works (or even doing a compare-and-contrast with Naomi Klein), well...that's not bad at all.

[Maxpower · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book after reading Yergin's great epic saga about the oil industry The Prize, expecting it to offer the same kind of rich and insightful and entertaining history about capitalism. Alas, Yergin could not recapture the magic he created when he wrote The Prize. The Commanding Heights is uninteresting, not very insightful, and overall tough to get through.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

What's the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today? What I tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the hidden hand. Things will happen in well-0rganized efforts without direction, controls, plans...That's the Hayek legacy."

Larry Summers
As quoted in The Commanding Heights


Overlooking my desk, there hangs one of my favorite images - a promotional photograph for Louis Vuitton, of all things. Taken by Annie Liebowitz, it shows Mikhail Gorbachev as he rides past the remains of the Berlin Wall, one of Vuitton's bags at his side (above). I was born in the late 1970s, which makes me fairly young in glacial terms but nonetheless old enough to remember the Soviet Union and the fall of The Wall in 1989. Seeing Mikhail Gorbachev pitching luxury goods is therefore something I never would have predicted twenty years ago, but if any image portrays the changes that have colored our world in the past fifty years, this is it.

It is this transformation that Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw chronicle in The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the Global Economy, their history of the world economy as it progressed through decades of central planning, through the free market reforms of Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s, and into the turbulence of the 1990s. In the book, Yergin and Stanislaw serve up an historical overview of the battle of ideas, particularly those of John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek, that have shaped our modern economy and their impact on countries ranging from France to India to the Tiger economies of East Asia in the 1990s.

If this all sounds sprawling and overly-ambitious, well, that's because it is. Though the writing is simple and clear, it often borders on simplistic and superficial. As a result, Commanding Heights is often a mile wide and an inch deep, leading Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute to note that the book tends to read like a 400-page newspaper article.

Despite framing the book as a battle of the ideas put forth by Keynes and Hayek - truly one of the great intellectual rivalries of the modern world - the authors devote surprisingly little time to these two men and their core philosophies. Sure, their names pop up here and there throughout the book, and their influence looms large - though often unmentioned - throughout, but given the way Keynes and Hayek shaped our world I expected to see a few more pages spent on them.

Which is not to go too far in disparaging the book. Yergin and Stanislaw have clearly done a tremendous amount of research, and the list of those interviewed for Commanding Heights is a heady one indeed: Gorbachev, Milton Friedman, Vicente Fox, Gary Becker, Narayana Murthy, Robert Rubin, Helmut Schmidt, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher, to name only a few. Of course, the book is so poorly-endnoted that the reader is often left guessing just where a given piece of information may have come from, though one could do a lot worse for a reading list than the fifteen-page bibliography offered in the back of the book.

In 2002, Commanding Heights was adapted into a six-hour documentary, which you can view online at the PBS website. Both the book and the documentary have nettled a variety of political groups opposed to open markets and aspects of globalization, especially Marxists and Socialists. The first edition of the book, published in 1998, also received criticism for not anticipating the various financial crises of that time, the scandals involving the likes of Enron and Worldcom, and the attacks of September 11.

To be fair, Yergin and Stanislaw have attempted to tackle these matters in the updated edition of Commanding Heights, published in 2002. Problem is, the newly-added chapters are little more than forty pages of platitudes that could just as easily have come from any number of the "leadership" books on the market today: "The high rise pyramids of hierarchical corporate structures are being transformed into the low-rise of the flatter organization - less bureaucracy, more teamwork, and greater dispersion of responsibility, information, and decision-making." (407) Sounds like someone's been playing tennis with Thomas Friedman.

As the global economy slides deeper into infirmity, we seem poised to debate anew the merits of government regulation and just how free we want our free markets to be. At some point in that discussion, however, we would do well to stand back and realize that despite our current travails we live in a time of incredible affluence, with more people in the developing world joining the prosperous ranks by the day. Whatever their book's faults, Yergin and Stanislaw at least got it right on this account.

[Clif · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to know how the economic world got to where it is today from the position it was in after World War II, then this is the book to read. You need not be an economist to understand the process as the author is careful to define terms, to go back to the origin of concepts and to present economic schools of thought in uncluttered prose.

Yergin follows the progression of economic thinking as it developed from the "corporatist" idea of the 1940's to the free market thinking that dominates the world today. Why were people so eager to try out socialist ideas? What experiences formed minds wary of unfettered capitalism, even in the United States?

Then, later on, why were political leaders driven to discard the government-led model of the economy that had seemed so full of promise? Why would governments willingly get out of the business of business?

Following the process of freeing the markets that began in the 1970's with Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and was taken up by the Reagan "revolution" in the United States, Yergin takes us around the world to find out how the process worked and who the people behind it were from Bolivia to Malaysia and many countries in between.

Many times while reading this book, I found myself exclaiming, "so, THAT'S what happened!" even as the events being described were ones that I have lived through. We all live busy lives where we can't attend to even major events, let along follow trends that progress through the years. It's great to gain the depth of understanding that such books as this can provide. If you are at all interesting in the economy (and we all should be) then get The Commanding Heights. I checked it out from the library and followed my read by purchasing a copy for my bookshelf.

UPDATE: As a result of much further reading since this I wrote this review in 2009, I realize the ignorance of history with which I wrote it. Understand that this book presents nothing about the way the United States did all it could through espionage, outright military intervention, the use of armed proxies, the CIA and the power of crippling other economies through market power to undermine any government that tried to make an economy work outside of the capitalist system controlled by the US since the end of WW2. The premier example, but only one of many, is Cuba. This book is a rah-rah account that takes no notice of the dark underside of making sure capitalism as practiced by the US and under its control would prevail worldwide. "The Commanding Heights" were not taken without subterfuge and blood being spilled.

[Frank Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a bunch of points where I felt like quitting the book. Unlike Yergin's other book, "The Prize," on the history of the oil industry, this one can be maddeningly imprecise and repetitive. Here, he'll spend pages discussing "deregulation" or "tariff reduction," without going into a single specific. Key figures are sometimes just identified as "important reformers" instead of minister of such and such, or chairman of such a commission. It's hard to know where all these reforms Yergin talks about are coming from. In the end, though, it is a nice synopsis of the the monumental changes that have taken place in the world economy since the early 1980s, and there are many fantastic stories here. For instance, I had no idea that, Vaclav Klaus, the first prime minister of the post-Communist Czech republic, was originally employed by the communist Czechoslovakian regime to read and "refute" Western economists like Friedman and Hayek, until of course he realized that these guys made a lot of sense, and then used what he learned to overturn the old system (he even wrote an essay titled "The University of Chicago and I"). Or that Yeogar Gaidar, one of Yelstin's aides, explicitly came up with the infamous "loans-for-shares" program in 1996, which gave away many of the Soviet Union's state resources for a song, in order to create a "critical mass" of wealthy Yelstin supporters who would give him cash and help him beat the communists in that years election (the money the state got from the sales also went directly into Yelstin's election campaign). Yergin interviews Gaidar who says that he would do it again in a heartbeat to fight the communists (Yergin did admittedly get some great interviews for the book).

The book really has a wonderful global reach, from the reforms of the Salinas regime of Mexico to post-Communist Russia to Steven Breyer's work on deregulation in the United States. As "The Economist" blurb on the back says, this is "a book that certainly needed to be written," and despite its faults I'm glad I read it.

[Robert Jerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an attempt to make a political appeal sound like a neutral world history. It portrays the last fifty years on earth as a great lesson in which human kind learned that free market capitalism is the only way to effectively manage and economy. The necessary omissions are plentiful. There is no Finland, Denmark, or Sweden. The violently repressive dictators installed through Latin America, especially Nicaragua, are portrayed as heroes of the Chicago School. Stalin's only fault was that he didn't allow free market competition. When a mixed market is successful, it is because "the free market overcame the government red tape." When a mixed market is unsuccessful, it is because "continued government planning and interference stifled the fledgling market." There is an entire chapter dedicated to praising Margaret Thatcher and another for Regan. Milton Freedman and Hayek appear over and over while no other winner of the Nobel in economics is mentioned.

Overall it is a very worthwhile read. Though the facts are mostly general knowledge, it provides an insight into how the right wingers during the Reagan/Thatcher era understood things.

[teacheur_le · Rating 5 out of 5]

A economy-history book needed to be read by every one.
Take a tea and read this book
Thanks to the author, we travel around the world and look what happened. Series of events impacting the world economy are presented in the book. We learn how free market with goverment regulations is important for a country.
The author talks also about globalization, its opportunites and challenges.
I'm really happy to know this book.

[Olya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting ideas that bogged down in the same phrases and meandering detours.

[Tùng Hoàng · Rating 5 out of 5]

NHỮNG ĐỈNH CAO CHỈ HUY - CUỘC CHIẾN VÌ NỀN KINH TẾ THẾ GIỚI

Tác giả: Daniel Yergin & Joseph Stanislaw
Dịch giả: Phạm Quang Diệu

“Ý tưởng còn có sức mạnh hơn cả những gì người ta thường nghĩ. Thực sự thế giới này được điều khiển không bởi cái gì khác ngoài ý tưởng” - John Maynard Keynes

Hiếm có cuốn sách nào làm tôi đọc lâu đến vậy, khi gấp lại trang cuối cùng ở trang 767, tôi giật mình, mình đã đọc cuốn sách này trong hơn một tháng. Hơn 30 ngày với việc đọc lần lượt từng chương, tra lại các từ ngữ kinh tế, tìm hiểu lại một số cuốn sách hiếm có liên quan, điều cuối cùng tôi cảm thấy thực sự vui mừng là cuốn sách này may mắn vẫn được tái bản và còn có thể tiếp tục đến được tay các độc giả. Đó thực sự là món quà cho những ai sẽ đọc nó và đọc đến trang cuối cùng, tôi mong là vậy!

Có lẽ việc sinh ra và sống từ những năm đầu của thời kỳ xóa bao cấp đã làm tôi hiểu được sự chuyển đổi thần kỳ đến với đất nước chúng ta, đến sự ảnh hưởng sâu đậm đối với cuộc sống của chính mình và những người xung quanh như thế nào. Những năm đầu thập kỷ 90 đó, khi Liên Xô tan rã, khi bức tường Berlin sụp đổ, tôi thấy một sự đổ vỡ lớn, một sự mất mát không gì bù đắp được trong niềm tin và lý tưởng của bố mẹ tôi. Một điều mà thế hệ chúng tôi hoàn toàn chưa hiểu lắm thời điểm đó, chúng tôi lúc này chỉ là đang thực sự háo hức chứng kiến cuộc sống quanh mình thay đổi ngày một rõ rệt. Những ký ức về thời kỳ chiến tranh, về thời bao cấp tem phiếu tuy nghèo nhưng giàu tình nghĩa, giờ chỉ còn có thể tìm lại qua những mảnh ghép ký ức rời rạc, qua những cuốn sách chuyền tay phản ánh một phần của lịch sử.

Vậy rốt cục, điều gì đã xảy ra với đất nước mình và bối cảnh thế giới như thế nào đã dẫn thế hệ của ông bà, của bố mẹ tôi, và cả tôi nữa cùng đi qua một thế kỷ đầy biến động như vậy. Tôi đặt mục tiêu cho mình cần phải tự tìm hiểu để bù đắp những lỗ hổng lớn mà sách vở trên ghế nhà trường thực sự đã không giúp ích được nhiều cho bản thân. Tò mò như một đứa trẻ khi có được cuốn sách này, tôi đi từ những năm tháng huy hoàng của chủ nghĩa xã hội đến sự cạnh tranh khốc liệt giữa hai thế giới tư tưởng, tìm hiểu sự sụp đổ tất yếu của một hệ tư tưởng quan liêu, trì trệ, thấu hiểu những khó khăn của quá trình phục hồi, phát triển trong kỷ nguyên toàn cầu hóa. Khối lượng dữ liệu và những phân tích thấu đáo của các tác giả cuốn sách đã làm tôi choáng ngợp, khâm phục và “ngộ” ra nhiều điều.

Tháng 11/1922, khi V.I.Lenin khởi xướng chính sách Kinh tế mới trong lần xuất hiện cuối cùng trước công chúng ở St. Petersburg, ông đã cho phép sự quay trở lại của tiểu thương và nông nghiệp tư nhân, nhưng đồng thời chỉ rõ Nhà nước sẽ vẫn nắm giữ “những đỉnh cao chỉ huy”, những yếu tố quan trọng nhất của nền kinh tế. Những năm tháng sau Thế chiến thứ hai là thời kỳ hoàng kim của quản lý nhà nước, của nền kinh tế hỗn hợp vận hành dưới sự điều hành của chính phủ và sự kiểm soát được mở rộng đến từng ngõ ngách đời sống người dân. Sau ba mươi năm huy hoàng của chủ nghĩa Keynes với những thành tựu thần kỳ của các nền kinh tế theo quan điểm hỗn hợp, nơi nhà nước chiếm lĩnh các đỉnh cao chỉ huy, điều gì phải đến rồi cũng đã đến.

Sự suy yếu nền chính trị, khủng hoảng kinh tế, khủng hoảng mất niềm tin tràn ngập khắp nơi trên thế giới khi những điểm yếu đã dần dần lộ rõ. Các chuỗi sự kiện đã dẫn đến một sự chuyển biến lớn từ kiểm soát của nhà nước sang điều tiết bởi thị trường. Sự thay đổi toàn diện về tư tưởng hay quá trình đảo ngược trên toàn thế giới này bắt đầu từ sự kiên định của Margaret Thatcher, người đàn bà thép nước Anh, rồi lan tới châu Âu, châu Á. Khi Chiến tranh Lạnh chấm dứt, bức tường Berlin sụp đổ, Liên Xô tan rã, Trung Quốc, các nước Mỹ Latinh... cũng nhanh chóng chuyển mình, thì cũng là lúc "Thị trường" lấy lại vị thế vốn có của nó và khẳng định tầm quan trọng trong phát triển kinh tế, xã hội. Sự sụp đổ cùng sự đảo cực trong tư tưởng kinh tế - chính trị toàn cầu đã tự nó đưa ra câu trả lời, dù nghiệt ngã và đau đớn với nhiều quốc gia, nhiều chế độ nhà nước. Giống như một cuộc thanh tẩy tâm hồn hay liều thuốc đắng cho cơ thể mang nhiều bệnh tật, điều cần thiết là lòng dũng cảm chấp nhận thay đổi và niềm tin vào đích đến cuối cùng, dù nó tiềm ẩn nhiều rủi ro, thách thức.

“Rủi ro là một phần tất yếu trong thế giới mới này... điều quyết định thực sự vẫn là dựa vào sự cân nhắc lại niềm tin và quan điểm... Niềm tin sẽ tồn tại nếu nó có điểm tựa và được kiểm nghiệm.”

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Điểm đánh giá: 9/10

Nhận xét: Có thể cuốn sách này sẽ làm người đọc ban đầu mệt mỏi, sẽ có lúc chán nản, muốn buông xuống, nhưng như thưởng thức chuyện đời, chuyện người bên ấm trà mạn với những người bạn tâm giao, vị đắng ban đầu sẽ thấm dần qua đầu lưỡi, lưu lại những cảm xúc nhẹ nhàng, rồi chuyển sang vị ngọt thanh sảng khoái khi đến những trang sách cuối cùng. Qua từng chương, cuộc sống của bao kiếp người được lật giở nhanh qua từng trang sách, qua từng con số thống kê khô khan nhưng biết nói, những điều mà chỉ những người đã trải nghiệm trực tiếp mới thấu hiểu khoảng thời gian đó khắc nghiệt nhưng đáng nhớ đến chừng nào.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I still remember the glitzy PBS miniseries singing the praises of the value of the derivatives trade. I'm reminded of the time Deng Xiao Peng asked an American professor how the stock market worked. The professor said you put a mirror in front of a book. Then you put another mirror adjacent to the first mirror. Then add another mirror. And another. You can do this a hundred times but as long the book is there, all the mirrors have a book.

Yes, this was the end of the Cold War, the End of History, where the Skorpions walked down to Moskva, down to Gorky Park... The Commanding Heights reads like a prospectus to a high-grade, AAA rated Lehman fund.

I presume this book was one of the glossy ads that lead to the repeal of Glass Steagall, a.k.a the Graham-Leach-Bliley. Now taxpayers are on the hook for probably another $50 trillion in proprietary, secret, Credit Default Swaps floating around the world. Japanese jobs are shipped to America. American jobs are shipped to Mexico (NAFTA) and Mexico jobs are shipped to China (WTO). Ahhhh, Ricardian free trade. Its proponents worship that your alter, but your leisurely 18th century mind could not have anticipated the level of devaluation a modern central bank can engage in. Competitive devaluation is the buzzword now. If anyone happens upon this book in the bargain, do rescue it and pass it down to a future generation of leaders, along with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's "Peace in our Time" speech.

[cbclaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was quite a difficult title to get through. The book is full of names of people and institutions, and all the important processes, although described in a very logical and orderly way, are presented with overwhelming amount of detail.

It's worth every single of the five stars, for it's vast amount of information, and, which I found the most praiseworthy - completely unbiased attitude. The book is purely informative and doesn't try to convey any ideology or a specific school of thought (to an extent), and it can challenge and flip your worldview into different directions several times during the lecture. The bottom line is, there are economic solutions that are better than others, but they are not always implemented well, and the situations that different countries are in are so unique, that it's inappropriate to speak of one, universally efficient way of managing economy.

The book presents different countries and describes their systematic transition, in context of their historical and cultural background. It goes all the way from US, to Latin America, Europe, India, China, Japan, South-East Asia, Russia, Africa.

I wish there would be more information about the middle eastern countries. I also wish that there was an updated version of this book (the information presented is from 1999), and that the audiobook narrator spoke in less monotonous way.

[Muhannad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book reads the history of world economy since the beginning of the 20th century until the end of it, highlighting the main economical events and turnarounds, and it much helps readers to understand the world economy today, my only take on the book is that I couldn't help but feel that the authors develop a somewhat biased point of view for "free market capitalism", I would've preferred a more objective view, it is still a great read nonetheless.

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Commanding Heights is a book about the control of the economic policies of nations. It goes into discussions about Communism and Socialism and other forms of Market Planning and goes over what happened to them. It is actually quite fascinating and interesting since it reminded me of a lot of World Events that I lived through but was too young to care about.

There isn’t much else to say, except that the book is a bit dated since it was printed in 1998.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as supremely as awesome as his other book The Prize, but a still a very good read. Gives a lot of background and subtext to current business and economics headlines.

[Tam Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

lịch sử kinh tế thế kỷ 20 đọc rất dễ hiểu với một đứa gà mờ như mình

[timnc15 · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy” is a world-spanning, all-encompassing book that presents an argument for free markets, international trade, and open enterprise using evidence from the last hundred years of global history. The authors explain the importance of globalization to an increase in the global standard of living and the necessity of the free movement of intellectual, human, and technical capital for this to manifest. The titular “commanding heights” refer to a Lenin speech alluding to state control of the most important sectors of the economy, contextualizing the rest of the book in the context of who gets to control these “commanding heights” and assert control over the markets (or lack thereof). The authors begin this book’s narrative with the Great Depression and the rise of government-heavy Keynesian policy, using widespread stimulus and intervention to correct the rampant market failures that characterized the 1930s. However, the book then argues that this approach to “regulatory capitalism” was unsuitable and inefficient for the post-Depression world, forcing neoliberal world leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to rise to power and pivot their respective economies towards deregulation and privatization. This pivot to neoliberalism is paralleled across the world, as Yergin and Stanislaw trace the transition from statism to market freedom in places such as the former Soviet Union, Germany, India, South America, China, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, emphasizing these similarities in efficient market outcomes but impressively retaining the nuance of the financial and political situation each country had to address to achieve these outcomes. Most interestingly, the authors reckon with the future of globalization, worrying about a shift back to statism fueled by Third World discontent and a lack of ideological loyalty to capitalism. This book is ultimately a spirited treatise for neoliberal policy and globalization that, while outdated due to its publication in 1998, provides a globetrotting recollection of how globalization happened to begin with.

This one was a really long one, but man did I learn a lot from it. I didn't expect to be Thatcher-pilled by the end of it, but the authors provide a forceful argument for neoliberal policies - even if they hand-wave a lot of social ills and genuine human suffering in the process. I also wonder how they'd respond to the shift toward protectionism and populism that we find ourselves in at the present political moment. The chapters on India, East Asia, European integration, and South America were also phenomenal - they felt like a window into a better world where we naively thought globalization would solve our problems (in a very Fukuyama-esque way).

Great book, took me a while, but learned a lot.

[Nemo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pretty good overview of how world economies turned towards Keynesian way(gov playing a big role) after 1930 crisis and esp after WWII. And then the Hayek theory (market economy) and Chicago School and the Thatcherism started to become a dominant trend in 1970s. I read carefully what the book said about China, HK and Singapore, and found that it basically captured the key things right, such as Deng and how he overcome dissident like Chen Yun. So I just assumed that the author have described other countries correctly.

What I like most is that the author brings in a lot of unfamiliar figures (economists, finance ministers, social activity organizers, and so on across various continents) and from time to time tell you something fun about their childhood, personal and political life. I can tell that the author must have done a lot of research and interviews to support the writing.

What I don't like is two fold.
A, it has a pre established view (market good vs gov bad), so you felt that the book doesn't provide a real interesting thinking but read more like a propaganda.
B, the whole book is purely focused on just one theme (how gov owned economy failed and then the reform toward market fixed the country) And after a couple of country examples the rest of book looks kind of banal and repetitive.

I don't need to read what happened in Brazil, Peru, Africa, India, Poland, Malaysia to predict what the author is about to say. So, the merit of this book is more in details and less in its key themes.

[J N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tôi thực sự thích cuốn sách này vì sự sắp xếp hợp lý về bố cục và nội dung của tác giả. Cuộc sách là một công trình đồ sộ về chuyển biến của kinh tế thế giới trong thế kì 20 và một phần thời gian của thế kỉ 21. Nếu bắt đầu đọc, tôi cũng thắc mắc vì sao hệ thống sắp xếp các khu vực tương đối lung tung, tức là lúc thì nhóm quốc gia ở châu lục này, sau lại quay lại nhóm quốc gia ở châu lục kia. Cho đến khi hoàn thành chương 12, tôi mới hiểu ra được trình tự sắp xếp này. Trình tự này dựa trên cả hai yếu tố là thời gian và sự kiện bên trong các khoảng thời gian, từ các sự kiện này dẫn đến sự quyết định của nhóm quốc gia khác. Vậy nên, trình tự đúng theo tôi đang hiểu chính là sự xoay vòng nhân-quả.
Đặc điểm thứ hai, tôi nghĩ muốn đọc được cuốn này, độc giả phải nắm được lịch sử kinh tế thế giới và cách mà các thế dẫn dắt kinh tế quốc gia. Ở vế hai, tôi khuyến khích bạn đọc nên đọc cuốn Why the nations fail? để nắm rõ được khái niệm hồn hợp và chiếm đoạt về mặt thể chế, dẫn đến cách thức lựa chọn đường lối kinh tế của chính phủ. Với tôi, cuốn này được xem như sự mở rộng của cuốn sách kể trên, kèm với đó là các sự kiện để chứng minh cho sự cần thiết của kinh tế thị trường. Ai yếu lịch sử kinh tế chính trị giống tôi, đọc xong cuốn này sẽ thấy sự bao quát với kinh tế thế giới cũng như hiểu thêm một khía cạnh khác về cách vận hành của các quốc gia lớn trong thời điểm hiện tại.
4.5/5

[Mark Dantonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

ISBN = 068483569X Daniel Yergin

This book is an excellent example of what Milton Friedman believes. That is, politics and economics are inextricably intertwined and cannot be separated. If I had to pick one central theme of this story it would be this.
This book is a stunning collection of historic, political and economic data from about the last 100 years. It begins in the pre WW1 times and goes through the present day. It completely covers Keynes, Hayek, Pope John Paul II, Friedman, Clinton, Thatcher, Churchill, Bush (41), Bush (43), Reagan, and many others. There is a set of DVDs (3) that closely follows the book. These DVDs show the actual interviews with the individuals mentioned above.
During my MBA program the instructor played parts of the DVDs for the class covering exchange rates, trade etc. It really helped me to understand the large picture. This book inspired me to read books written by Hayek and Friedman.
You can buy the DVDs on eBay for under $30.00. It is worth it. The book costs about $15 at Borders.

Mark D.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice overview of the world economy looking at the early twentieth-century through 1998. As an aside you can choose to read the book and watch a six hour PBS documentary on the book, which is what I did.

The key thing to remember for me is that when Deng Xiaoping changed China's economy to capitalism within one year he unleashed 500,000,000 workers on the world. There is a reason that China claims double-digit growth, and at the same time created a rift in the world work force.

The last idea is that although capitalism is not perfect, it does have a reputation for being the system that works better than any other.

[Strong Extraordinary Dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of two parts (literally).

The first part is purely informative, about how the titans of the world economies (power, heavy Industry, the huge specialist Industrial sectors in those countries that have / had them) developed in the world's various economies. The general idea is that as industries grew their needs changed.

The second part is more of a cheerleading for giving away these national assets to the nearest rich person and opposing the "explosion of (human) rights" so annoying to the small-minded 1%. Lots of obvious mistakes and tenuous connections here - hence this book''s bad reputation.

Wanted to give 5 stars, but couldn't.

[Degenerate Chemist · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely enjoyed this book for what it was- a history of the economic and political landscape of the world post WW2. I am a novice on both these topics and this book felt written right for my level. As other reviewers have noted this book is a little to optimistic about free market economies and neoliberalism as it was published pre 2008. While the reading material was dense and took me awhile to get through this was definitely informative and worth the time. It was a fascinating roadmap of how we got to the world we live in today.

[Berry Muhl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely essential reading for anyone interested either in economics or in the recent history of the world. An indispensable companion volume to The Prize, which I also heartily recommend.

This work was treated in miniseries form by PBS, and I also strongly suggest you check that out, as there is some new material there to discover.

[Neshamah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Đỉnh cao chỉ huy là các chính phủ, cuốn sách là tổng quan sự phát triển của các đất nước nổi bật sau thế chiến. Với điểm chung là sự tập trung khôi phục và tìm hướng phát triển kinh tế dựa trên một cơ sở lý thuyết vững chắc, các cơ sở lý thuyết này phần lớn ảnh hưởng bởi kt tư bản. Đi liền vs nền tảng đó là một nhà lãnh đạo giữ đúng hướng cho nền kt.

[Tom feux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Economic history for dummies

A most accessible survey of modern history viewed through the lens of economic evolution. The central theme is planned economies vs market based. A most satisfying answer is that both are plateaus (footholds) on the way to socio-economic perfection.

[Hans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gusto mucho. Un libro completo que da un panorama general del mundo en el siglo 20 desde el punto de vista económico. Con una tendencia desde el marcado y libre mercado como respuesta a todo, sin embargo si analisa los problemas y consecuencias que ha traido este. Recomendable.

[Harsh Thaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Politics, Economics & Policy of countries from South Korea to Chile moving from commanding heights to free market system

[Kỳ Lân · Rating 3 out of 5]

Một cuốn sách không như mong đợi của mình. Cơ bản về nội dung có thể chấp nhận được, nhưng quá dài làm cho người đọc ngán ngẫm bởi sự trùng lặp.