COMMON GENIUS: Guts, Grit, and Common Sense: How Ordinary People Create Prosperous Societies and How

How to avoid the decline of great societies? Let the common people show the way! What makes a society prosperous? Why have prosperous societies eventually fallen into decay? Is such decline inevitable? Bill Greene takes the reader on a fascinating stroll through history-- looking at societies that created prosperity. Greene looks at the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Vikings, the Basques, and other successful societies, all the way up to the current-day success of the United States. Greene considers what factors were responsible for their successes, and the same answer keeps coming up: When the common people are free to be creative and productive, societies prosper. Nothing more is required. And of the decline of such societies? He finds that, invariably, the rise of an intellectual class--which critiques what the common people have created with little understanding of that process--brings on the decline. Greene calls for a return to relying on common sense and shows how listening to the intellectuals is leading America down the path of destruction. He hopes his message arrives in time to change that path and to protect the legacy of freedom and prosperity for the generations to come. A fascinating perspective!