Plough, sword and book Book

One of the rare meta-histories that is witty, wears its learning lightly, and is predictive (written in 1989) not simply an explanation of the past. On the development of the jealous god, about how ideas survive the material circumstances that made their birth possible, about how ideas shape material circumstances - unsurpassed. And as a collector of quotes I've never come across but shall pretend that I have always known them, unsurpassed. Mauriac: La place a table ne ment jamais. Ibn Khaldun's definition of government 'remains the best: it is an institution which prevents injustice other than such as it commits itself.'