Book description
Sylvia Nasar, the author of the phenomenal bestseller A Beautiful Mind
takes us on a journey through the epic story of the making of modern
economics, and how it rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by
placing its material fate in its own hands, rather than in Fate.
Nasar's account begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing
and publishing the condition of the poor majority in mid 19th century
London, the richest and most glittering place in the world. This was a
new pursuit. She then describes the efforts of Marx, Engels, Alfred
Marshall, Beatrice and Sydney Webb, and Irving Fisher to put those
insights into action - with revolutionary consequences for the world.
From the great John Maynard Keynes to Schumpeter, Hayek, Keynes's
disciple Joan Robinson, the influential American economists Paul
Samuelson and Milton Friedman, and India's Nobel Prize Winner Amartya
Sen, she show how the insights of these activist thinkers transformed
the world - from one city, London, to the developed nations in Europe
and America and now the entire world.
In Nasar's dramatic account of these discoverers we witness men and
women responding to personal crises, world wars, revolutions, economic
upheavals, and each others' ideas to turn back Malthus and transform the
dismal science into a triumph over mankind's hitherto age-old destiny of
misery and early death. This story, unimaginable less than 200 years
ago, is a story of trial and error, and ultimately transcendent,
rendered here in stunning narrative. Praise for 'A Beautiful Mind'
'Tells a moving story and offers a remarkable look into the arcane world
of mathematics and the tragedy of madness'.
The New York Times Book Review
'Might be compared to a Rembrandt portrait, filled with somber shadows
and radiant light effects…superbly written and eminently
fascinating…simply a beautiful book.' The Boston Globe Sylvia Nasar is
the author of the bestselling A Beautiful Mind. She is the John S. and
James L. Knight Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
