The Company of Strangers can be summed up as offering a panoramic view of tunnel vision and its effect on all aspects of human life. He has chapters on the murderousness of apes and on the information behind market prices, on faking laughter and ruling empires, on gifts and auctions (from slave markets to eBay), on property rights, on water management, on the search for knowledge as division of labor across generations. The style is impressionistic, covering a huge canvas with a light brush. The chapter on cities, for instance, describes deftly the flair, and the stink, of great cities but relegates their social history to endnotes and references. If the book has a weak point, it is the exceptional facility of Seabright's writingsometimes his verve threatens to carry him away. But then, this may well be intentional: The book is obviously not meant as an exercise in planned economy, but as an excursion, without blinkers and without apprehension, through a tumultuous crowd of ideas. The Man of the Crowd |
