This breakthrough scientific masterwork - and INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - reveals the underlying forces that have shaped human history and will secure our future...

'Masterful. Galor answers the ultimate mystery' Lewis Dartnell

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. Drawing on a lifetime's scientific investigation, Oded Galor's ground-breaking new vision 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