This was a great, readable world history. The style is breezy and doesn't feel like a textbook full of dates and treaties to be memorized. (But maybe that's because I approached it voluntarily.)

Morris's idea of a single numeric metric to use to compare West and East might not seem right, but it's a great device to sort of "motivate" the narrative, and provides a pretty interesting lens through which to view the collapse of Rome and Industrial Revolution, and yields a pretty good explanation for Chinese pride and the resentment of the "century of humiliation".