How Nations Escape Poverty: Vietnam, Poland, and the Origins of Prosperityby Rainer ZitelmannEncounter Books, 2024; xiii + 212 pp.Rainer Zitelmann has a well-deserved reputation as a defender of the free market; few, if any, can match his immense capacity for amassing relevant facts and using them effectively to support his arguments. This capacity is much in evidence in his latest book, How Nations Escape Poverty. They do so, Zitelmann says, by moving from socialism to capitalism, and in the book, he offers a powerful illustration of his thesis. After the Indochina War, Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world, but dramatic freemarket reforms have made this formerly socialist country prosperous. In like fashion, Communist Poland was among the poorest nations in Europe, but
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