>> DeLong considers how events in that era (as an example) balance between contingency and necessity; choice and structure. Tooze is more a proponent of structure and necessity; DeLong of contingency and choice. DeLong, however, concedes that future historians may come down closer to Team Structure-Necessity.
Huh. That must be a new paradigm he introduces to make sense of post 2008. I didn't get that far. (On recent bankers' mismanagement I really enjoyed Anat Admati, Banker's New Clothes.)
>> Perhaps, but then we always wonder: what if the Archduke had not been assassinated?
Right!? Those fatal one-off serendipitous events -- that set in motion unimaginable chains of follow-on. Compare Tolstoy's W & P epilogue against one-off Great Men (Napoleon) -- vs. the stubborn prevailing will and suffering of a whole people. (So Russian.) Tolstoy would be a structure-necessity sort of guy. We Americans love the individualist contingency-choice. (I'm jumping to conclusions before reading...)
>> DeLong considers how events in that era (as an example) balance between contingency and necessity; choice and structure. Tooze is more a proponent of structure and necessity; DeLong of contingency and choice. DeLong, however, concedes that future historians may come down closer to Team Structure-Necessity.
Huh. That must be a new paradigm he introduces to make sense of post 2008. I didn't get that far. (On recent bankers' mismanagement I really enjoyed Anat Admati, Banker's New Clothes.)
>> Perhaps, but then we always wonder: what if the Archduke had not been assassinated?
Right!? Those fatal one-off serendipitous events -- that set in motion unimaginable chains of follow-on. Compare Tolstoy's W & P epilogue against one-off Great Men (Napoleon) -- vs. the stubborn prevailing will and suffering of a whole people. (So Russian.) Tolstoy would be a structure-necessity sort of guy. We Americans love the individualist contingency-choice. (I'm jumping to conclusions before reading...)