Ambition is a human trait with a profoundly Dickensian character. It is the best of virtues and the worst of virtues. It is both denounced and praised by religious and secular authorities. It drives entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth but also causes the creative destruction of established economic and social orders. It fosters the rise of civilizations and propels their decline. And yet, as author William Casey King notes, historians have ignored the inflected path of ambition's transformation from ancient vice to modern virtue, an oversight that coincidently enables many distorted interpretations of economic and political history.
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