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76 Books and arts The Economist December 16th 2017
2 annual productivitygrowth of6% in recent easier to understand. Laggards may have ter edited: it offers twice in the space of
years, a third have seen none at all since little incentive to invest, since they are wor- three pages, for instance, Peter Thiel’s ob-
2000. ried that frontier firms will gobble up their servation that it is easierforTwitter to scale
Why is this? Frontier firms increasingly innovations. That can bring down the up than it is fora yoga studio.
rely on intangible investment, so they easi- overall rate ofinvestmentand thusproduc- Yet the book also has a deeply practical
lyspread theirideasacrossthe world, reap- tivity (and wage) growth. The frontier streak. It offers policymakers advice on
ing big rewards. But laggard firms, perhaps firms, however, are happy to invest. They how to help the intangible economy
largelyrelyingon tangible investment, can- make high returns in part because they thrive. Ifnotenough intangible investment
not. Most of the rise in income inequality have the expertise to make the most from is provided by the market, governments
in rich countries, the authorspointout, can such investment and in part because they could step in. Theyshould ensure that digi-
be attributed to growing inequality be- are less concerned about smaller firms tal infrastructure—broadband and the
tween firms, ratherthan within them. stealing their ideas (the local taxi firm can- like—is top-notch. Governments need to
The rise of intangible investment may not hope to copy Uber’s algorithms). encourage people to live in cities; sensible
also explain why, since the financial crisis, At times, the reader may feel that the planning regulation is thus vital. Policies
there have been high rates of profitability book oversells its case. The authors seem such as these are all well and good, but
and relatively low rates of business invest- to believe that intangibles can explain after putting down the book the reader is
ment. If returns on investment are so high, pretty much anything, from high levels of left with another sobering thought. The
then why is investment so weak? With the executive pay to the election of President economyisbecomingwinner-take-all, and
idea of spillovers in your head, it becomes Donald Trump. Itcould also have been bet- will become evermore so. 7

The history of New York
Bigger and bigger

Greater Gotham: A History of New York City unstoppable engine ofcapitalism. Spoil-
from 1898 to 1919. By Mike Wallace. Oxford eralert: they succeeded. By1919 “Greater
University Press; 1,196 pages; $45 and £35 Gotham” was “a colossal fact”, as Mr
Wallace writes, the italics his own. “It had
EWYORKhas neverbeen a city to do the planet’s tallest skyscraper, its biggest
Nthings by halves. And so it is perhaps office building, and its largest department
not surprisingthat on New Year’s Eve, store, hotel, corporate employer, bankers
1897, the metropolis became—overnight— club, steamship fleet, electrical-generat-
twice as large as any othercity in Ameri- ingplant, bakery, ballroom…” The list
ca, and the second-largest city in the goes on and on.
world. “Consolidation”, as it was called, But New York’s economic growth is
united New Yorkand Brooklyn, Queens, just a fraction ofthe city’s tale. MrWal-
the Bronxand Staten Island underthe lace aims to include just about every
new blue-and-white flagofGreaterNew aspect ofmetropolitan life, which means
York. “GreaterGotham” traces, at both that the bookrewards the readerwho Fishing
epic and intimate scale, the ramifications wishes to dip in and out as much as the
ofthat consolidation until just after the one who ploughs the whole way The bounty below
end ofthe first world war. through. Individual chapters address
Ifnearly1,200 pages seems excessive transport, housing, culture, show busi-
fora bookthat covers a mere 22 years, ness and more. The bookthen turns to
perhaps a little history ofthe book itself people, focusingjust as much on the
is in order. In 1999 “Gotham: AHistory of indefatigable men and women—and Fishing: How the Sea Fed Civilisation. By
New YorkCity” was awarded the Pulitzer there were many women—who fought Brian Fagan. Yale University Press; 368 pages,
prize, and rightly so; in it Mike Wallace forthe rights ofNew York’s poorest citi- $30 and £25
and his co-author, Edwin Burrows, began zens as it does on the plutocrats who
with the island ofManna-hata’s earliest oversaw Gotham’s growth. HROUGHOUT history, often for reli-
inhabitants to trace the story ofthe me- Throughout, MrWallace’s lively style Tgious reasons, humans have tended to
tropolis to the end ofthe 19th century. turns an invaluable workofreference believe the oceans are inexhaustible. An
Now MrWallace, a historian at the City into a grippingread. His swift portraits of Egyptian pharaoh was assured by his
University ofNew York, has struckout on New York’s heroes and villains are vivid father in about 2010BC that the gods had
his own forthis long-awaited follow-up, a and memorable. And like every great made fish for humans to eat. Likewise,
volume which more than does justice to workofhistory, his bookcasts light on Christianity encouraged the faithful to
its predecessor. the present: he writes lucidly, for ex- consider the products ofboth sea and land
“GreaterGotham” begins with the ample, ofPuerto Rico’s economic travails as intended by God for human use: an infi-
comfortable self-aggrandisingwhich the in the aftermath ofthe Spanish-Ameri- nite bounty. Onlywith the adventofa vast,
rest ofthe world believes (not incorrectly) can war, his account ofAmerican colo- industrialised fishing industry, and the
characterises New Yorkers. MrWallace nialism still resonant in 2017. The bookis damage and depletion it has caused, has it
describes the consortium ofpolitical and enriched by those who lived in tene- become clear that this assumption has
business interests who worked forcon- ments, skyscrapers orFifth Avenue pal- been a disastrous mistake.
solidation in orderto propel a concatena- aces. Like the city itself, “GreaterGo- With the advent of arable and animal
tion ofprosperous communities into an tham” contains multitudes. agriculture, fishing alone, of the three an-
cient ways of obtaining food—the other 1