For years—usually with friends and a bit of wine—I puzzled over the question of why, for thousands and thousands of years, very little seemed to change in terms of the material lives of average people, then all of a sudden we had an Industrial Revolution. Capitalism— whatever that was—came along and now we are all rich—at least relative to non-capitalist nations. A dozen or so years ago I got serious about understanding exactly what capitalism was and what had happened. After a lot of reading and a lot of thinking, out came The Evolution of Wealth.

I have a BS in Physics from Caltech and, in my 40’s, took a year off from real life to earn a Masters in Business Economics from UCLA. . I am far from being an economist, but have found that I was quite comfortable with economic thinking—I tend to be kind of a policy wonk. I am now retired and living in San Diego with my wife Penny and our two poodles, Britain and Paris.