The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration

Abstract

Zimbabwe, and other countries. Although Morrison stretches his religious analogies to the breaking point, when it comes to Brexit, he kicks things off already beyond the breaking point. He clearly does not like the gold standard and clearly does not like Brexit, so why not contend that they are, in some sense, the same sort of thing? Actually, in one case, Britain returned to an international institutional arrangement at the behest of almost all its elite opinion makers, whereas, in the other case, Britain left an international institutional arrangement against the advice of almost all its elite opinion makers. Maybe both decisions were bad, but, if so, they were bad for opposite reasons. This is really two books in one. Its core is an excellent history of Britain’s return to the gold standard after World War I. Morrison is a skilled and diligent researcher and has unearthed a very interesting tale. Unfortunately, like a live oak draped in Spanish moss, the central story is carrying an enormous amount of parasitic growth: all of the talk of religion, orthodoxy, heresy, apostles, Mount Sinai, and so on. Morrison would have done better to have produced the excellent work of history of which he was clearly capable and cleared his tree clear of all the epiphytes.