Shelf Life

The news in this quarter is that his book, The Making of Modem Economics, is a reference bible. It is organized around themes, the first—appropriately—entitled “It All Started with Adam [Smith!].” He walks the reader through chapters in Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, Mises. The eighth chapter is on “Marshalling the Troops: Scientific Economics Comes of Age.” On through Chapter 13: “The Keynes Mutiny: Capitalism Faces Its Greatest Challenge.” He celebrates the other “Milton’s Paradise: Friedman Leads a Monetary Counterrevolution,” and ends with “Dr. Smith Goes to Washington: The Triumph of Market Economics.”

What is especially fine about the book is not only its scope but its organization. Every page has bold-faced subheads giving the curious reader a handy and authoritative definition of what it is, in the not-so-long history of economic thought, he might want to learn about, or remind himself of. The text under the heading “The First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economy” ends three paragraphs later with the sentence, “Let’s look more closely at the lives and ideas of three economic wizards, Walras, Pareto, and Edgeworth, who founded the branch of welfare economics.”

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The news in this quarter is that his book, The Making of Modem Economics, is a reference bible. It is organized around themes, the first—appropriately—entitled “It All Started with Adam [Smith!].” He walks the reader through chapters in Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, Mises. The eighth chapter is on “Marshalling the Troops: Scientific Economics Comes of Age.” On through Chapter 13: “The Keynes Mutiny: Capitalism Faces Its Greatest Challenge.” He celebrates the other “Milton’s Paradise: Friedman Leads a Monetary Counterrevolution,” and ends with “Dr. Smith Goes to Washington: The Triumph of Market Economics.”

What is especially fine about the book is not only its scope but its organization. Every page has bold-faced subheads giving the curious reader a handy and authoritative definition of what it is, in the not-so-long history of economic thought, he might want to learn about, or remind himself of. The text under the heading “The First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economy” ends three paragraphs later with the sentence, “Let’s look more closely at the lives and ideas of three economic wizards, Walras, Pareto, and Edgeworth, who founded the branch of welfare economics.”