From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives
Written by Jeffrey E. Garten
Narrated by Tom Perkins
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Jeffrey E. Garten
Jeffrey E. Garten teaches courses on the global economy at the Yale School of Management, where he was formerly the dean. He has held senior positions in the Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton administrations, and was a managing director of Lehman Brothers and the Blackstone Group on Wall Street. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, BusinessWeek, and the Harvard Business Review, and he is the author of four previous books on global economics and politics.
Related to From Silk to Silicon
Related audiobooks
Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Prophetic City: Houston on the Cusp of a Changing America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly---and the Stark Choices Ahead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Land of Enterprise: A Business History of the United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Price of Prosperity: Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5History of Standard Oil, The: Volume 1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/513 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave Something on the Table: And Other Surprising Lessons for Success in Business and in Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
European History For You
The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Hideous Progeny: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400 – 1066 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The War on the West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: with Pearl and Sir Orfeo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History that Inspired Game of Thrones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of American Cemeteries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor and The Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Templars: The History and the Myth: From Solomon's Temple to the Freemasons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ghost Map Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Teutonic Knights: A Military History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reformation: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ripper: The Secret Life of Walter Sickert Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter: From the Battle for Moscow to Hitler's Bunker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Battle of Brothers: William and Harry – The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for From Silk to Silicon
8 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great choices of thinkers who were doers
I learned a lot even in the communications and technology fields I have already read a lot about. The author writes well about the great ark of history. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives, Jeffery Garten offers a brief history of globalization over the course of humanity's history. It's an enjoyable jaunt through the last thousand years, and while Garten's approach is less that of a historian and more of a layman's, his broad strokes make the book accessible.
In contrast to other books on globalization, which focus on the forces of war, trade, and migration, From Silk to Silicon examines ten individuals of whose "heroic deeds" gave globalization a "gigantic boost" towards interconnectedness. Each individual is chosen for their role in making the world smaller and more interconnected, spanning a period commencing with Genghis Khan in the twelfth century up until the present. Each individual was transformational, were "first movers" in their field or arena and thus had an outsize impact, and was a doer (in contrast to a thinker). None were particularly saints, but Garten sees their impact as, in totality, unambiguously positive.
Without a doubt, the stories he tells--the lives he describes--are fascinating. Here is Genghis Khan, who rises with ruthless brutality and genius to dominate the steppes and then the entire landmass from China to Iraq, followed by Henry the Navigator, a desperate royal son without a kingdom to inherit, the first to begin to explore the coast of Africa (and to introduce slavery of its population to the world). Robert Clive ekes out the British Empire almost single-handedly from India, while the Rothschilds rise from the Frankfurt Jewish to become the first international bankers. Then there's Cyrus Field, who lays the first telegraph across the Atlantic, shrinking the world from the distance crossed in weeks by sail-power to just the minutes necessary for semaphore to travel telegraph lines. John D. Rockefeller creates the modern energy industry, while also becoming the archetype for modern philanthropy, and Andrew Grove, a Jewish refugee from war torn central Europe, goes on to make Intel the most influential creator of chips that drive the Information Age. Garten's group isn't complete without politicians, either: Margaret Thatcher is here, as well as is Jean Monnet and Deng Xiaoping.
Anyone of them could, and has, spawned their own biographies, and Garten makes no attempt to pose as a replacement for these. Rather, From Silk to Silicon feels like an entry-level examination of the impact an individual can have on the future of human endeavor and the increasingly interconnected world. No, they weren't validations of the "great man theory of history," says Garten. They were as much a product of their time as they were influential in shifting the course of events. "The people in this book were of their time and they made their time," Garten writes. "They steered history only insofar as they seized the opportunity that contemporary circumstances afforded them."
In closing, Garten asks whether the world is becoming too complex for a single individual to continue to make the kinds of contributions that the ten individuals he discusses have made. He sees the challenges faced by his ten protagonists as no less formidable than those we face today. They, like us, lived in revolutionary times. And yet, the complexities of the modern world are not too much for the emergence of another in the types of Khan, Thatcher, or Rockefeller. To each, their age must have been complex to the time, and it is the ability to take advantage of shifting circumstances, identify a major problem, and attack it at the weakest point that will create the next transformational leaders.