The making of modern economics The lives and ideas of the great thinkers

Aspiring to create an Austrian school version of Robert Heilbroner's popular The Worldly Philosophers (7th ed., 2000), Skousen comes closer to achieving an idiosyncratic libertarian alternative to E.R. Hunt's History of Economic Thought (2nd ed., 1992). Skousen's survey is woven around a collection of heroes and villains struggling with the intellectual forces of good and evil, in which the entrepreneurial spirit of natural liberty inevitably emerges triumphant. The enlightenment of Adam Smith, eclipsed by the dismal misinterpretations of Ricardo, Mill, and Marx, is restored by the 19th-century Austrian marginalists, only to fall prey to Keynesian interventionism in the 20th century before being rescued by another generation of Austrians and their allies. This volume is polemical and superficial. With quality alternative histories of economic thought readily available, this poorly edited effort is recommended only for the most comprehensive collections. R. S. Hewett Drake University

Skousen, author, editor, and academic, tells the story of the development of economic thought, describing his approach as ". . . a candid, irreverent, passionate, sometimes humorous and often highly opinionated account of the lives and theories of famous economists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman." The author's unique view compares the development of economic thought to the construction of a building, designating Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations as the foundation. He contends that Smith's philosophy of natural liberty and the invisible hand was a sound foundation that created a new era of wealth and economic growth spanning two centuries. With the inclusion of photographs, diagrams, commentaries, and even appropriate music selections, each chapter is devoted to a major economist and his theories, showing how he added to or detracted from Smith's positions. Skousen ends on an optimistic note even as fighting continues over which economic policies to pursue in times of crisis, uncertainty, and globalization. --Mary Whaley