Book Forum 

# *The Grim Old Days:*

### *An Introduction to the Preindustrial Past* 

Published By Cato Institute • 2026 

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Date and Time 

November 5, 2026 4 - 5 PM EST 

Location 

Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 

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##### Featuring 

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Emma Camp 

Senior Newsletter Editor, *Wall Street Journal*

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](https://x.com/emmma_camp_) 

![Dominic Pino](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2025-10/dominic-pino%20Cropped.jpg?itok=RvymhbeQ) 

Dominic Pino 

Editorial Writer, *Washington Post*

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[![Chelsea Follett](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2021-01/Chelsea%20Follett.jpg?itok=t0sPC8WK)](/people/chelsea-follett) 

[Chelsea Follett](/people/chelsea-follett)

Research Fellow, Human​Progress​.org, Cato Institute

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](https://x.com/chellivia) [ 

](mailto:cfollett@cato.org) 

What was life *really* like before economic growth? Join us for a book forum offering a tour of a thankfully lost world of bloodletting, filth, destitution, and famine-induced cannibalism, dispelling the idea that the Industrial Revolution failed to improve living standards for ordinary people. Nobel Prize–winning economist Joel Mokyr says the book should be “mandatory reading” for growth skeptics, and Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist George F. Will calls it a “powerful demolition of capitalism’s critics.” The author and other speakers will relate the book’s message to modern skepticism about the value of economic growth and broader distrust of free markets and technologies that are said to hold the promise of potentially bringing about the “next industrial revolution.”

**Reception to follow.**

![The Grim Old Days: An Introduction to the Preindustrial Past - bookcover](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/promo_block_book_cover_1x/public/2026-09/thegrimolddaysbookcover.jpg?itok=K0zW4_cq) 

### *[The Grim Old Days: An Introduction to the Preindustrial Past](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H732D29B?tag=catoinstitute-20)*

Trying to imagine the preindustrial past might conjure the image of an idyllic country village with pristine air and residents merrily dancing around maypoles. The healthy, peaceful, and prosperous people in this fantasy of pastoral bliss do not realize that their contented, leisurely lives will soon be disrupted by the story’s villain: the dark smokestacks of the Industrial Revolution, what the poet William Blake called “satanic mills.” Yet such rose-colored views of history bear no resemblance to reality.

[Purchase Book](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H732D29B?tag=catoinstitute-20) 

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