My review of Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World is available online now.
McCloskey argues that economic growth is a far bigger phenomenon than can be explained by the marginal calculus of modern economics – and also that economic growth is the precondition for intellectual and spiritual growth.
Did you catch the pair of “In Our Time” discussions on the industrial revolution? They were both terrific, and did leave me thinking that for non-specialists such as myself, our understanding of the industrial revolution is possibly to simple, too superficial. But I think that while it's right to say that coal etc might be insufficient to explain the magnitude of economic and social change, surely the ability not just to examine new ideas but to use these new ideas to make machines is significant? Other cultures (eg, Greek) had philosophers but they didn't use their ideas to make anything (or just toys, like with steam).
Perhaps I can only think about these things through drearily practical anglo-saxon spectacles.
The In Our Time discussions were fab – I loved it that there was a row on such a cerebral programme. The more I read about the origins of the modern economy, the more I think no one factor can explain what happened. A lot of things need to be lined up to set off the virtuous circle, and that's rare – but when it happens it's so spectacular you get an 'economic miracle'.