The subject at hand is "price revolutions and the rhythm of history." It turns out that there have been four great inflationary periods in European history, each punctuated by long stretches of stability and each having a similar set of features. These periods are:

• 1180-1399: The Medieval Price Revolution
• 1400-1470: The Renaissance Equilibrium
• 1471-1659: The Price Revolution of the 16th Century
• 1660-1730: The Equilibrium of the Enlightenment
• 1731-1819: The Price Revolution of the 18th Century
• 1820-1896: The Victorian Equilibrium
• 1897-Present: The Price Revolution of the 20th Century

According to Fischer, "This wave pattern is familiar to European scholars, but it is not well known in the English-speaking world." In fact, he says that only the 16th century price revolution is familiar to most U.S. historians.

Right away, this looks like interesting stuff. After all, the most compelling reason to study history is for the light it sheds on current events, and a realization that our current inflationary cycle is not unique should help us both to understand it better and to make fiscal and public policy decisions more intelligently. With that in mind, here is the basic structure of the four price revolutions that Fischer studies:

1. A population spurt occurs.
2. This causes prices to rise due to increased demand. At first, the price rise is quite small (certainly less than normal year-to-year fluctuations) and is not noticeable.
3. Over a period of 30 years or so, prices of basic materials (primarily food and fuel) rise considerably, putting pressure on the poorest classes of society.
4. Rents and interest rates begin to increase, once again putting pressure on the poor while benefiting the rich.
5. As prices rise, the demand for money increases. Governments react by increasing the money supply (either through currency debasement, war, or more vigorous mining of precious metals), which adds fuel to the inflationary fire.
6. Eventually, the disparity of wealth between rich and poor becomes so large that the masses rebel. A period of turmoil ensues, life becomes wretched, and people have fewer babies.
7. A few monarchs lose their heads, the turmoil ends, population pressure eases, prices drop steeply, and a period of equilibrium ensues. During this time of equilibrium, real wages usually rise and rents and interest rates decline.
8. After a hundred years or so, times have been good for so long that everyone starts having more babies.
9. The next wave begins.

Fischer is careful to distinguish this phenomenon as a wave, not a cycle. The length of each wave is highly variable (ranging from 90 years to 170 years) and the timing of the next wave is unpredictable. Our current wave, for example, is now 100 years old and although it shows signs of being at its end it might well continue for another 50 years.

The most interesting single conclusion from Fischer's book is that price revolutions are generally periods of considerable instability: crime rates rise, more babies are born out of wedlock, etc. His thesis is that this is caused not by the inflation itself, but by the stresses created by growing disparities of wealth: as the poorest members of society become ever poorer they also become ever more desperate. Eventually, these stresses become so great that society breaks down completely for a time.

Another interesting note is that Fischer believes the evidence shows that inflationary waves are not caused by monetary policies. Rather, he believes that they are initially caused by increasing demand for goods (prompted by an increase in population) and that monetary policy merely feeds the fire about 30-40 years into the wave in a vain attempt to meet the demand for more specie caused by the higher prices.

Fischer does not believe that our current inflationary episode is substantially different from previous ones. The poor are doing better now than they were in previous waves, but he notes this primarily as a reflection of a broad trend in which the poor have done successively better in each wave thanks to generally rising standards of living and increases in social programs. There are some genuine differences in our current wave, mostly caused by greater understanding and control of our economic system, but Fischer believes that the underlying phenomenon is essentially the same as it has been for a thousand years. The evidence of wealth disparity appears to disturb him the most, and he suggests that the increasing wealth disparity of the last 30 years is evidence that we are approaching the end of another wave.

However, that's about where he stops, and this brings us to the reason that The Great Wave is a disappointment.

Fischer spends 250 pages describing each of the four price revolutions in considerable detail, aided in part by a vast number of charts and data series. This actually gets tiresome fairly quickly--the broad outlines of each episode are pretty similar--and I was looking forward to the last 250 pages which, presumably, would contain trenchant analysis of all this data.

Unfortunately, the last 250 pages don't exist. It turns out that this hefty tome ends on page 258 and the rest of the book (through page 508) consists of appendices, notes, and sources. This is ridiculous for two reasons. First, because a book like this demands some analysis and conclusions and there are virtually none, and second, because no one in his right mind includes 250 pages of notes in a popular book. Sure, it's published by the Oxford University Press, but I bought it at Barnes & Noble with a colorful dust jacket and all the accouterments of a book aimed at laymen.

The bottom line is that this DrumNet review contains just about everything you need to know about the book. Unless you're interested in the minutia of exactly which prices rose, in which cities, and at which times, you just don't need to read the whole thing. In fact, it probably deserves to be a long magazine article rather than a $30 hardback.

My advice: raw data is interesting to professional historians, interpretation and analysis is interesting to ordinary people. Since The Great Wave contains lots of the former and little of the latter, in the end it's not that fulfilling. Probably best to save your money.

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