biological sciences

Academic press books rarely get the attention they deserve, so I hope this book does not get lost in the mix. Paul Seabright is a terrific writer, and his account in this book of the origins of cooperation is lucid and exciting. Seabright makes the important point that successful economies and societies depend on cooperation, and that even though self-interest would seem to lead us to reject that, time and again we manage to work together. This cooperation with strangers is, though, a fragile thing, and Seabright's conclusion raises the specter that in the future we may need to work a lot harder to remain in the company of strangers. I'm not fully convinced by the book's end, but the argument is worth thinking about. Also see Robert Wright's "Nonzero," Howard Rheingold's "Smart Mobs," and James Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds" for variations on this argument.

It's a scary world out there, but Professor Seabright helps explain why we're prepared to put our trust in people to whom we're not related. Starting with the example of the (unplanned) global cooperation needed just to enable Paul to buy a new shirt, he takes the reader on an ambitious tour of the economic evolution of human nature.

Previous Seabright publications have included macroeconomic monographs on Eastern Europe. Though still not an easy read, this will appeal to the intelligent general reader looking for a new perspective on world affairs.

And what links this to Iron Maiden, the heavy-metal rock group? From 1972 to 1976, Paul Seabright was at the same school (and in the same house) as Bruce Dickinson, who would go on to become lead singer of that group. It is a strange world, and one wonders how much trust there would now be between the two.

My belief is that this could be one of the most important books published this year. It would also make a great documentary TV series, if the BBC were prepared to make another epic in the mold of 'The Ascent of Man' and 'Civilisation'.

The Company of Strangers starts with the purchase of a shirt. How is it that exactly the item we want is available in our local store, when we didn't know the farmer who grew the cotton, the dyer who dyed the thread, the tailor who sewed the pieces, nor the shipper who shipped the shirt? Nor did most of these people know each other. Of all the things that might puzzle a Neanderthal who wandered into our time zone, this would be one of the strangest.

In this wonderfully readable book, subtitled "A Natural History of Economic Life", Paul Seabright follows the story of what he calls the "shy, murderous ape" from lonely hunter to homo economicus, confidently mingling with crowds of strangers and daily dependant on numerous people whom he has never met. Amazingly, to our Neanderthal, we have learned to trust strangers.

The question asked in the second half of the book is how far we should rely on such leaderless chains. Some items, such as airline travel and hospital care, don't lend themselves to blind trust. And who is to stop the cotton farmer from polluting the river that the dyer downstream drinks from, or the dyer from polluting the air that the tailor breathes? At what point do the connections between countries or companies become impossibly fragile?

Finally Professor Seabright dismisses recent talk about globalization as "excitable" and dismisses it as a mere continuation of a trend of "at least the last ten thousand years." That does imply that, as far as economics is concerned, camels and the Silk Road are no different from container ships and the internet highway. This is one of several topics in the final chapters of the book which are only touched upon and which would repay our closer attention. Perhaps we can hope that The Company of Strangers is only the first volume in a story to be continued.

Kudos also to Leslie Flis, Tim Flach and Augustin de Berranger for the stunning dust jacket. They too were part of the chain in the production of this highly entertaining and likable book.