A quick review of a paper that proposes that the Church can be interpreted as a franchise.  (Note done very quickly without a script)

A review of Niall Ferguson's series examining why the West came to dominate the world and asking whether it can continue to do so.

The early Christians were highly organised and increasingly powerful.

Gibbon was uncomfortable with miracles and this made writing about the rise of the Christianity a bit of a problem for him.  His response was one of the greatest bits of sarcasasm in the English language.

What was it about a small Jewish sect that gave them the ability to conquer the Roman world?

At the age of fourteen I was oblivious to the controversy surrounding Gibbon's coverage of the rise of christianity which was much less respectful than the people at the time were used to.  It retains some of its power to shock even to this day.

If you are going to write a book proposing that giving aid to Africa is a bad idea, you are going to find it much easier to do if you are African.  If you are an African with a very solid background in economics so much the better.  As it happens Dambisa Moyo is ideally placed.  She was born in Zambia and has studied at several top UK and US universities and worked at Goldman Sachs.  So she can say things that a European or an American might find it much harder to say.