This breakthrough scientific masterwork - and INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - reveals the underlying forces that have shaped human history and will secure our future... The stunning advances that have transformed human experience in recent centuries are no accident of history - they are the result of universal and timeless forces, operating since the dawn of our species.

Galor overturns a host of long-held assumptions to reveal the deeper causes that have shaped the journey of humanity:

• Education rather than industrialisation
• Family size and gender equality as much as inventions and technology
• Geography and diversity rather than wars, disease and famine

'Unparalleled in its scope and ambition . . .All readers will learn something'  Washington Post

'An inspiring, readable, jargon-free and almost impossibly erudite masterwork'  New Statesman

'His optimism about humanity shines through'  Observer

'If you need an evidence-based antidote to doomscrolling, here it is'  Guardian

'Masterful. Galor answers the ultimate mystery' Lewis Dartnell