I thank Robert Margo for what turned out to be a useful review of Clark's FAREWELL TO ALMS: A BRIEF ECONOMIC HSISTORY OF THE WORLD . I will order the book. Neither do I agree with Clark's construction of history HOWEVER. Big Picture history is an attempt to answer legitimate big picture questions. Finding the answers to such questions, as Margo implies, is a reasonable motivation for small picture studies, even though to pursue small picture studies is to travel down a path that cannot lead to big picture answers. The world is infinitely divisible into smaller and smaller pictures, and there is no end to it. At some point that path must be abandoned, and an entirely different path taken, if answering big questions is the motivation. By their nature big questions have to be addressed in a big picture. Robin Neill