In a string of whitewashed villages in the mountains of the Italian island of Sardinia, there are 21 centenarians in a population of 10,000. Only about four in 10,000 Americans reach the 100-year mark. So what do the Sardinians know that our own diet-and-health obsessed country doesn’t? Want Great Longevity and Health? It Takes a
Village WSJ. Also exercise. And beans.
The author is Michael North, and this new and excellent book, when it comes to the earlier centuries, emphasizes the role of Swedes and Germans in shaping a region of prosperity and trade. The most interesting section (starts p.239) is about the 1920s, when the Baltic nations underwent a radical deindustrialization, due to their severing from the Russian empire. That is when they deviated from the Nordic economies, which for the most part continued their industrialization.
I also recommend Sverre Bagge, Cross & Scepter: The Rise of the Scandinavian Kingdoms from the Vikings to the Reformation. If nothing else, this book will make you wonder if the recent success of the Nordic nations are in fact so deeply historically rooted after all. As North (p.205) points out: “Industrialization arrived in all of these countries relatively late.” Tom Buk-Swienty’s 1864: The Forgotten War That Shaped Modern Europe is a good book on how and why Denmark lost so much territory to Prussia/Germany.
Why the oldest person in the world keeps on dying?
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HSBC fears world recession with no lifeboats left Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
