@theoldworldshow
This is one of my favorite books of all time, and one I recommend to everyone who asks for a recommendation whenever I get the chance It paints a beautiful picture of the very different world that used to exist, one where greatness was still prized more highly than equality and equity, and so men did great things They built magnificent homes, gorgeous palaces, and immense empires. New men built businesses the scale of which had never been seen, and the old elite pushed high culture to its greatest flowering. Those who were talented could and did rise, and those who were incompetent quickly lost it all and fell away It was a world of consequences good and bad, of rewards for excellence and punishment for falling behind It was a world of pride and hauteur, but also of public faith and policy rooted in a deep and abiding belief in Christianity It was a world before tax policy punished the competent for the benefit of the incompetent, a world before the disastrous equality of the present And in this book, Emmerson shows what that world looked like, good and bad, and how it functioned Such is the best way to jump into remembering that a different world used to exist