why nations fail book review pdf

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Book review: ‘Why Nations Fail,’ by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

“Why Nations Fail” is a sweeping attempt to explain the gut-wrenching poverty that leaves 1.29 billion people in the developing world struggling to live on less than $1.25 a day. You might expect it to be a bleak, numbing read. It’s not. It’s bracing, garrulous, wildly ambitious and ultimately hopeful. It may, in fact, be a bit of a masterpiece.

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, two energetic, widely respected development scholars, start with a bit of perspective: Even in today’s glum economic climate, the average American is seven times as prosperous as the average Mexican, 10 times as prosperous as the average Peruvian, about 20 times as prosperous as the average inhabitant of sub-Saharan Africa and about 40 times as prosperous as the average citizen of such particularly desperate African countries as Mali, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone. What explains such stupefying disparities?

The authors’ answer is simple: “institutions, institutions, institutions.” They are impatient with traditional social-science arguments for the persistence of poverty, which variously chalk it up to bad geographic luck, hobbling cultural patterns, or ignorant leaders and technocrats. Instead, “Why Nations Fail” focuses on the historical currents and critical junctures that mold modern polities: the processes of institutional drift that produce political and economic institutions that can be either inclusive — focused on power-sharing, productivity, education, technological advances and the well-being of the nation as a whole; or extractive — bent on grabbing wealth and resources away from one part of society to benefit another.

To understand what extractive institutions look like, consider les Grosses Legumes (the Big Vegetables), the sardonic Congolese nickname for the obscenely pampered clique around Mobutu Sese Seko, the strongman who ruled what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997. When Mobutu decreed that he wanted a palace built for himself at his birthplace, the authors note, he made sure that the airport had a landing strip big enough to accommodate the Concordes he liked to rent from Air France. Mobutu and the Big Vegetables weren’t interested in developing Congo. They were interested in strip-mining it, sucking out its vast mineral wealth for themselves. They were, at best, vampire capitalists.

But the roots of Congo’s nightmarish poverty and strife go back centuries. Before the arrival of European imperialists, what was then known as the Kingdom of Kongo was ruled by the oligarchic forerunners of the Big Vegetables, who drew their staggering wealth from arbitrary taxation and a busy slave trade. And when the European colonists showed up, they made a dreadful situation even worse — especially under the rapacious rule of King Leopold II of Belgium.

When Congo finally won its independence in 1960, it was a feeble, decentralized state burdened with a predatory political class and exploitative economic institutions — too weak to deliver basic services but just strong enough to keep Mobutu and his cronies on top; too poor to provide for its citizenry but just wealthy enough to give elites something to fight over.

Acemoglu and Robinson argue that when you combine rotten regimes, exploitative elites and self-serving institutions with frail, decentralized states, you have something close to a prescription for poverty, conflict and even outright failure. “Nations fail,” the authors write, “when they have extractive economic institutions, supported by extractive political institutions that impede and even block economic growth.”

But even as vicious cycles such as Congo’s can churn out poverty, virtuous cycles can help bend the long arc of history toward growth and prosperity. Contrast the conflict and misery in Congo with Botswana — which, when it won its independence in 1966, had just 22 university graduates, seven miles of paved roads and glowering white-supremacist regimes on most of its borders. But Botswana today has “the highest per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa” — around the level of such success stories as Hungary and Costa Rica.

How did Botswana pull it off? “By quickly developing inclusive economic and political institutions after independence,” the authors write. Botswana holds regular elections, has never had a civil war and enforces property rights. It benefited, the authors argue, from modest centralization of the state and a tradition of limiting the power of tribal chiefs that had survived colonial rule. When diamonds were discovered, a far-sighted law ensured that the newfound riches were shared for the national good, not elite gain. At the critical juncture of independence, wise Botswanan leaders such as its first president, Seretse Khama, and his Botswana Democratic Party chose democracy over dictatorship and the public interest over private greed.

In other words: It’s the politics, stupid. Khama’s Botswana succeeded at building institutions that could produce prosperity. Mobutu’s Congo and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe didn’t even try. Acemoglu and Robinson argue that the protesters in Egypt’s Tahrir Square had it right: They were being held back by a feckless, corrupt state and a society that wouldn’t let them fully use their talents. Egypt was poor “precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that has organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people.”

Such unhappy nations as North Korea, Sierra Leone, Haiti and Somalia have all left authority concentrated in a few grasping hands, which use whatever resources they can grab to tighten their hold on power. The formula is stark: Inclusive governments and institutions mean prosperity, growth and sustained development; extractive governments and institutions mean poverty, privation and stagnation — even over the centuries. The depressing cycle in which one oligarchy often replaces another has meant that “the lands where the Industrial Revolution originally did not spread remain relatively poor.” Nothing succeeds like success, Acemoglu and Robinson argue, and nothing fails like failure.

So what about China, which is increasingly cited as a new model of “authoritarian growth”? The authors are respectful but ultimately unimpressed. They readily admit that extractive regimes can produce temporary economic growth so long as they’re politically centralized — just consider the pre-Brezhnev Soviet Union, whose economic system once had its own Western admirers. But while “Chinese economic institutions are incomparably more inclusive today than three decades ago,”China is still fundamentally saddled with an extractive regime.

In fairly short order, such authoritarian economies start to wheeze: By throttling the incentives for technological progress, creativity and innovation, they choke off sustained, long-term growth and prosperity. (“You cannot force people to think and have good ideas by threatening to shoot them,” the authors note dryly.) Chinese growth, they argue, “is based on the adoption of existing technologies and rapid investment,” not the anxiety-inducing process of creative destruction that produces lasting innovation and growth. By importing foreign technologies and exporting low-end products, China is playing a spirited game of catch-up — but that’s not how races are won.

So how can the United States help the developing world? Certainly not by cutting foreign aid or conditioning it; as the authors note, you’d hardly expect someone like Mobutu to suddenly chuck out the exploitative institutions that underpin his power “just for a little more foreign aid,” and even a bit of relief for the truly desperate, even if inefficiently administered, is a lot better than nothing. But ultimately, instead of trying to cajole leaders opposed to their people’s interests, the authors suggest we’d be better off structuring foreign aid so that it seeks to bring in marginalized and excluded groups and leaders, and empowers broader sections of the population. For Acemoglu and Robinson, it is not enough to simply swap one set of oligarchs for another.

" Why Nations Fail " isn't perfect. The basic taxonomy of inclusive vs. extractive starts to get repetitive. After chapters of brio, the authors seem almost sheepish about the vagueness of their concluding policy advice. And their scope and enthusiasm engender both chuckles of admiration — one fairly representative chapter whizzes from Soviet five-year plans to the Neolithic Revolution and the ancient Mayan city states — and the occasional cluck of caution.

It would take several battalions of regional specialists to double-check their history and analysis, and while the overall picture is detailed and convincing, the authors would have to have a truly superhuman batting average to get every nuance right. Their treatment of the Middle East, for instance, is largely persuasive, but they are a little harsh on the Ottoman Empire, which they basically write off as “highly absolutist” without noting its striking diversity and relatively inclusive sociopolitical arrangements, which often gave minority communities considerably more running room (and space for entrepreneurship) than their European co-religionists.

Acemoglu and Robinson have run the risks of ambition, and cheerfully so. For a book about the dismal science and some dismal plights, “Why Nations Fail” is a surprisingly captivating read. This is, in every sense, a big book. Readers will hope that it makes a big difference.

is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and a former adviser to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.

WHY NATIONS FAIL

The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

By Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

Crown. 529 pp. $30

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

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Builders in Shenyang, China: party control will not permit a full ascent to prosperity.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson – review

Two US academics offer a compelling analysis of the world’s financial malaise

A s the turbulence of global economic crisis starts to recede, the two fundamental features of the world economy in our times re-emerge. One is the gap between rich and poor countries. Two hundred years ago, there was no such gap, at least not on the scale we are used to today; nor, most probably, will there be one in 200 years’ time. But the present reality is of astounding difference: the same people can live in abject poverty in one country, yet be prosperous once they move to another.

This book takes the graphic example of the twin towns of Nogales, one on the Mexican side of the border, the other on the American side: why does a border make such a difference? Self-evidently, this question matters, because unacceptable global inequality generates other brute facts: the psychologies of guilt and resentment; escalating pressures for migration; and the nightmare choices that face the world when some nations do not merely fall behind, but fall apart.

Scholars have struggled for decades to find a convincing answer. Often, the direction of search has been technocratic. In the 1960s, the dominant explanation was that poor countries lacked capital; by the 1980s, it was that they had poor economic policies.

The last decade has appeared to offer a new and potent clue: the ascent of China , which is the other fundamental feature of our times. China’s growth is an economic phenomenon without precedent that has implications both for poverty and geopolitics. It has lifted millions out of penury and the country is projected soon to topple America from its position as the world’s largest economy. The beacon offered by China has been widely interpreted, especially by African elites, as demonstrating the benefits of autocracy.

For anyone remotely interested in these issues Why Nations Fail is a must-read. Acemoğlu and Robinson are intellectual heavyweights of the first rank, the one a professor of economics at MIT, the other a professor of political science at Harvard. Mostly, such people write only for other academics. In this book, they have done you the courtesy of writing a book that while at the intellectual cutting edge is not just readable but engrossing. This alone would be reason to take notice: a vital topic, top scholars, and a well-written book.

But this is not the half of it. The reason that Why Nations Fail is not to be missed is that their thesis pulls apart the two big brute facts of global development. Far from seeing China as the clue to spreading prosperity, Acemoğlu and Robinson see it as yet another instance of a society rushing into a cul-de-sac. China is not, on their analysis, on course for our own level of prosperity.

Their argument is that the modern level of prosperity rests upon political foundations. Proximately, prosperity is generated by investment and innovation, but these are acts of faith: investors and innovators must have credible reasons to think that, if successful, they will not be plundered by the powerful.

For the polity to provide such reassurance, two conditions have to hold: power has to be centralised and the institutions of power have to be inclusive. Without centralised power, there is disorder, which is anathema to investment.

China most certainly ticks this box – it has centralised power and order in spades. Some African societies don’t; localised power usurps the authority of the state. But China resoundingly fails to tick the box of inclusive institutions. Acemoğlu and Robinson quote a summary of the structure of Chinese political power: “The party controls the armed forces; the party controls cadres; and the party controls the news.”

That states need order to prosper is important but no longer controversial. That they need inclusive institutions is, in view of China’s success, wildly controversial. Their argument is that order without inclusive institutions may enable an economy to escape poverty, but will not permit the full ascent to modern prosperity. Their explanation is that if the institutions of power enable the elite to serve its own interest – a structure they term “extractive institutions” – the interests of the elite come to collide with, and prevail over, those of the mass of the population.

So, if inclusive institutions are necessary, how do they come about? Again, Acemoğlu and Robinson are radical. They argue that there is no natural process whereby rising prosperity in an autocracy evolves into inclusion. Rather, it is only in the interest of the elite to cede power to inclusive institutions if confronted by something even worse, namely the prospect of revolution. The foundations of prosperity are political struggle against privilege.

A thesis can be summarised, albeit crudely, in a short review. Yet the main strength of this book is beyond the power of summary: it is packed, from beginning to end, with historical vignettes that are both erudite and fascinating. As Jared Diamond says on the cover: “It will make you a spellbinder at parties.” But it will also make you think.

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Book Reviews

Book review: why nations fail.

Marianne Hii
Katrina Zhang
Marianne Hii , Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
Katrina Zhang , Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
Page/Article: 71-77
Published on 11 Aug 2021

The Journal for Student Geographers

A review of ‘Why Nations Fail’

By Fintan Hogan, King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys

Acemoglu, Daron., and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail : The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. London: Profile, 2012.

Hogan, F. (2020) A review of ‘Why Nations Fail’. Routes 1(2): 251–255.

This piece reviews the 2012 book Why Nations Fail , co-authored by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012). Their work focuses on the role of institutions in fostering development; specifically economic institutions like secure property rights and political institutions like free and fair elections – structures that commonly develop hand-in-hand. However, throughout the book, the authors write as we would expect geographers to do; frequently contextualising their argument with broader quantitative and qualitative data. Despite an apparent focus on the economic and the political, the social aspects of geography validate their argument throughout.

1. Introduction

Political accountability means the powerful can no longer rob the weak. That’s the basic premise of Why Nations Fail , with a consistent focus on the political and economic rights afforded to people over the last few millennia. The book may more accurately be called ‘Why Nations Succeed’ , since the authors draw policy prescriptions from some of the most advanced economies of each era. Reviewing a book which explicitly rejects geography as an explanation for development may appear counter-intuitive for Routes , but on reflection, the premise put forward by Acemoglu and Robinson is crucial to any understanding of development dynamics seen through a geographical lens. Daron Acemoglu is a Professor of Economics at MIT and James Robinson teaches Economics at the University of Chicago – it makes sense then, that they would see economic institutions as uniquely pivotal throughout. While Chapter 2, entitled ‘Theories That Don’t Work’, rejects ‘The Geography Hypothesis’ (p48), one should not be so quick to believe that the discipline has little to learn from their conclusions. On the contrary, geographers are concerned with the flow of information, expansion of trade and progression of inequality, all of which play pivotal roles in the authors’ premise.

Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson offer a concise summary of their premise in the very final line of the book: ‘…durable political reform, will depend, as we have seen in many different instances, on the history of economic and political institutions, on many small differences that matter and on the very contingent path of history’ (p462). To use their own terminology, the argument held throughout the book is that development is only sustained through ‘inclusive economic and political institutions’, supported through a ‘virtuous’ positive feedback cycle – illustrated through charting the Neolithic, Industrial and Technological Revolutions. Through this, they reject ‘extractive political and economic institutions’ which facilitate growth for a short amount of time (catch-up) and profit very few people, stalling ‘creative destruction’ and generating ‘vicious’ cycles. As such, low taxes and strong central government are seen as important characteristics of a nation’s success. An example of how this may develop in practice could be citizen assemblies or unions providing some political accountability – through this, the economic security of workers grows, and development follows. In advancing their argument, the authors use a wealth of historical sources in what becomes a compelling and universal argument.

2. A more nuanced view of geography

In fact, what the authors reject in Chapter 2 is physical geography ; the site and situation which people find themselves in. This theory has been termed environmental, or geographical, determinism and has been repopularised by academics like Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs and Steel fame (Diamond, 1999). Prisoners of Geography is another popular text in this vein, emphasising the importance of the physical environment on modern-day geopolitics (Marshall, 2015). These readings are sometimes termed ‘man-land geography’ too, emphasising the interaction between the natural environment and those who rely on it. To a certain extent, Acemoglu & Robinson are correct in their reasoning that broadly similar climates and reliefs can yield vastly different results, and they use colonial and post-colonial Congo to illustrate localised disparities (p58).

Despite this, they appear to neglect the fact that modern technology still overwhelmingly benefits from a positive location. Geographers from as early as GCSE learn of hydropower and its benefits to Ethiopia, alongside containerisation and how it fails to help landlocked Malawi or mountainous Nepal. Despite this, their argument broadly holds true – on the whole, regions with similar soils, coasts and rainfall can have hugely divergent development pathways. They argue that small changes in institutions are widened into cavernous gaps following ‘critical junctures’ – for example, the decentralised workforce of England led to the Peasants Revolt following the Black Death; this improved working conditions, unlike in much of Eastern Europe (p96). Now you may ask, doesn’t this sound a lot like history? Indeed it does, and this is what continually struck me while reading. The use of the phrase ‘contingent path of history’ to wrap up the entire book shows this clearly and demonstrates how their argument rests on singular people and events, rather than trends or patterns, as indeed does the term ‘critical junctures’.

3. Geography underpins the argument

Well what does Geography offer to this reading? Unquestionably a huge amount. The concept Acemoglu and Robinson revere in particular is participation – using the example of the Glorious Revolution (1688), the authors argue that a broad coalition of interests acts as an effective set of checks and balances within the group, supporting the introduction of equality and representation. What geography shows here is how these groups of people emerge, regardless of individual figures, in a collection of diverse interests. Understanding wealth and its distribution is shared with Economics, but underpinning a geographical perspective is the idea of social capital, inclusivity and community – the authors themselves seem to recognise this with the divergence in the distribution of serfdom across Europe by 1800 (p108). While all European peasants in the early Middle Ages were subjugated to feudalism, by the 19 th century the western European poor had strong social cohesion, fuelled by urbanisation, while those in eastern Europe still remained scattered, facing coerced farm labour. Demography and culture are as important as any purely economic factor – geography highlights the importance of place to this institutional drift.

One needs to look no further than the A Level Changing Places topic to understand how, as geographers, we can understand a community, looking beyond their economic or political standing, in a way which ‘the contingent path of history’ often relies on. It is easy to argue that historical events drive development, because every occurrence can be seen as a direct cause. However, the authors’ historical accounts are frequently contextualised by pieces of relevant data, demonstrating the importance of a wider societal understanding which underpins everything that the book has to offer. Understanding development through a geographical perspective offers the sort of coherent wider picture which the authors rely on throughout.

4. Conclusion

In short, geography is crucial to understanding the conditions which allow for the emergence of institutional reform, rather than attributing change just to single political figures or fateful events. In the modern world, this exposes itself through free trade and the exchange of services, individuals and ideas. The very first example in the book used Nogales, USA and Nogales, Mexico (a city divided by a fence) to highlight extreme inequality (p7). In the 21 st century, we attribute this to policy attitudes towards loans, welfare, property rights and globalisation. While the authors here employ the catch-all term of ‘institutions’, what the readers of this journal will be able to ascertain is far deeper. As geography students and researchers, we can perceive far more from history than what just individuals or economics can tell us. Without this wider view, historians would fail to really understand the preconditions for development (Rostow, 1959), using circular logic to suggest that developed economies must have experienced ‘good development’ and underdeveloped ones ‘bad’. Incorporating the authors’ ideas into academic studies is likely to give students another insight into development factors, and their global exploration contextualises some key areas of GCSE and A Level content. Geography moves beyond a narrow idea of development, complimenting and supporting the entire premise of the text. I would encourage you to perhaps pick up a copy of this 500-page tome – it’s worth a read.

5. References

Acemoglu, D & Robinson, J.A. (2012) Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty , New York: Crown

Diamon, J (1999) Guns, germs and steel: The fates of human societies , New York: WW. Norton & Co.

Marshall, T (2015) Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics , London: Elliott & Thompson

Rostow, W (1959) The Stages of Economic Growth , The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol 12, No. 1, pp1-16

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Why Nations Fail Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: Why Nations Fail dives into the reasons why economic inequality is so common in the world today and identifies that poor decisions of those in political power are the main reason for unfairness rather than culture, geography, climate, or any other factor.

Favorite quote from the author:

Table of Contents

Video Summary

Why nations fail review, audio summary, who would i recommend the why nations fail summary to.

Why do some nations prosper while others struggle and are plagued with poverty and greed? Some people say it has everything to do with a nation’s location, culture, or lack of knowledge. But surely this can’t be the whole picture.

Just look at Botswana. It currently has one of the fastest increasing economies in the world. Meanwhile, close by Congo and Sierra Leone are stuck in a cycle of violence and poverty.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson centers around the question of why some nations remain poverty-stricken while others live in abundance. In this eye-opening book, the authors explain that the difference is actually the result of economic and political institutions put in place during critical junctures in history.

Here are just 3 of the many eye-opening lessons I got from this book

The best way to explain the difference in living standards between countries is by looking at their institutional differences.
A single event at a critical juncture can mean a world of difference for a country’s success.
It can be really hard to break out of the cycle of poverty, but it is possible.

Let’s get right to it and see what we can discover about inequality!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: If you want to explain why two countries can have such different living standards, just look at the institutions they have put in place.

Forget age-old theories that some countries struggle economically because of their location. There are far too many countries next to each other that have different living standards to prove this as false.

The economic landscape determines the difference between these countries. These are the regulations directing the economy within a country’s borders. This includes things such as public services, property laws, and access to financing .

A country can have either inclusive or extractive economic institutions. Inclusive economic institutions pave the way for economic success because they encourage citizens to participate in economic activities. They are strong in economic freedom.

Examples of this include South Korea and the USA, where the economy benefits from private property laws, developed banking sectors, and strong public education. This system encourages people to work hard and be creative because they know their efforts will bring wealth .

An extractive economic institution receives income from one group in society for the benefit of another group. An example of this is colonial Latin America, which had a system built on the exploitation of indigenous people to benefit colonizers. Another example is North Korea, where the Kim family created a repressive regime that didn’t allow private property and secured all power for the select elite only.

Lesson 2: One event can mean a country takes an entirely different institutional path, changing the course of its future.

In the mid-fourteenth century, the Black Death took almost half of Europe’s population. This was an event influential enough to overturn the sociopolitical balance of a nation or continent.

Before the Black Death, most of the economic and political systems in Europe were extremely extractive. A country’s monarch owned land, and he gave his land to lords who promised to give military capabilities in return. Peasants would then take care of the land. They worked hard to make a living but paid most of what they earned in taxes and had almost no freedoms.

But when the Black Death hit, there were suddenly huge shortages in labor. The peasants in Western Europe seized this opportunity to demand lower taxes and more rights. Eastern European peasants were not so lucky. They were less organized, and landowners managed to take advantage of this and started hiking taxes higher and making the system even more extractive.

This is why the authors call the Black Death a critical juncture in history. For Western Europe, it spelled the end of extractive feudalism. But in the east, it grew worse. Institutional drift is the result of this difference that led to divergent paths. It’s where two similar regions grow in different directions.

We saw a similar institutional drift when global trade expanded, and the British colonized the Americas . Sometimes it takes centuries, but a small number of critical junctures can mean institutional drift that creates drastically different economic landscapes between once-similar areas.

Lesson 3: Stopping the cycle of poverty can be extremely hard, but it isn’t impossible.

We know that events in history can change the course of a country’s future. But what can countries do to fix the extractive institutions they have in place?

First, the authors explain that history doesn’t necessarily doom the future of these countries. We know that inclusive and extractive institutions can grow from critical junctures. The cycle can be broken.

The US South’s exclusive institutions against Blacks are slowly becoming more economically and politically inclusive. There is still a lot to be done, but the civil rights movement meant that good changes were finally coming for Blacks in America.

So what can we do? The first thing to do is make sure we encourage inclusive institutions so these countries can grow their own prosperity. Did you know foreign aid does very little to change extractive institutions in Africa and central Asia?

If we want to promote positive , long-lasting change, we need to direct foreign aid in a more meaningful way. The groups that are excluded from institutions need to have ways to defy the oppressing institutions.

For example, in Brazil, a grassroots movement of empowered people rather than politicians overthrew the country’s military dictatorship in 1985. Social movements led by these people paved the way for a coalition that resisted any future dictatorships.

Ever since Brazil broke that cycle, it has seen a huge rise in prosperity. In fact, between the years 2000 and 2012, it was one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. This serves as proof that shattering the chains of poverty is never too late.

Why Nations Fail will change the way you see the world. I never realized that such simple differences in institutions could mean such drastic differences in standards of living. I think this is an extremely important book that everyone can learn something from.

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The 56-year-old who hasn’t even been able to figure out why some countries prosper while others stay poor, the 19-year-old who is majoring in political science, and everyone who wonders how we can end the awful pandemic of inequality.

Last Updated on December 5, 2022

Luke Rowley

With over 450 summaries that he contributed to Four Minute Books, first as a part-time writer, then as our full-time Managing Editor until late 2021, Luke is our second-most prolific writer. He's also a professional, licensed engineer, working in the solar industry. Next to his day job, he also runs Goal Engineering, a website dedicated to achieving your goals with a unique, 4-4-4 system. Luke is also a husband, father, 75 Hard finisher, and lover of the outdoors. He lives in Utah with his wife and 3 kids.

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