Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc Book

This book serves its purpose perfectly well, it just isn't something to really recommend as a read. This is for assigning to undergrads and grad students as the first reading in a world or global history class. Marks is attempting to get away from a Euro-centric model of recounting world history; he wants to re-orient world history to the...orient...sort of. He basically is arguing that the Indian Ocean world was the first place where all kinds of cultures came together to trade, and this is where world history can really be said to 'begin'. The Chinese and the Indians were really the drivers of history at this point, as they were simultaneously the big producers of goods and the big markets. But Europe was desperate to get in on the action, so they accidentally discovered America, developed nice new guns and boats, and started their long, illustrious history of pushing everyone else in the world around. Now we are reaching a point after several centuries where China and India are heading towards regaining their rightful thrones as the cruxes of the world.
I also get a sense that you can read this book and basically understand what Pomeranz is arguing in The Great Divergence, as Marks cites him at length, and I think he's making the same or a similar argument.
So anyway, this is for students to read and then they can come to class and argue about getting away from being Euro-centric and about whether this is just switching from Euro to China-centric and why did some countries industrialize before others and etc.