The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History Book

David Hackett Fischer has gained a reputation for making History come alive--even stories as familiar as Paul Reveres ride or as complex as the transit of British culture to America. Now he has done it again in The Great Wave, a history of price movements and cultural change from the middle ages to the present.

Fischer examines price records in many nations, and finds our great waves of rising prices in the thirteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and twentieth centuries. All were marked by price swings of increasing volatility, falling real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, and an increase in violent crime, family disintegration, and cultural despair. Each long wave reached its climax in a period of political revolution, demographic contraction, and economic collapse. Every crisis was followed by sharp deflation, and then by a long era of price equilibrium, rising real wages, falling returns to capital, growing equality, and accelerating population-growth. Aggregate demand increased, and another wave began.

Fischer concludes that we are living in the late stages of the twentieth century price revolution. He does not predict what will happen next. Rather, he ends with an analysis of where we might go from here, and what our choices are now.