This is a book about culture and economic behaviour. For a professional economic historian, this is an unusual combination. Economists (and following them, economic historians), after all, have studiously avoided including culture in their understanding of human behaviour. This scholar is nevertheless convinced that culture matters in economics. Culture influences economic outcomes: it is in part responsible for the material standard of living enjoyed by people around the world; there are, in other words, good cultures and bad. In attaining prosperity and driving down poverty, some values help, some hinder. While this is often claimed, it is far less often specified. Exactly how culture influences some (surely not all) economic outcomes is rarely addressed by social scientists.