The Worldly Philosophers
Robert L. Heilbroner · 1953
The lives and ideas of the great economists, Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Marx, Veblen, Keynes, Schumpeter, told as one continuous story of people trying to understand why the world produces what it produces. Seventy years and some four million copies later, still the best-written introduction to economic thought in the language.
The case against
It is a survey from 1953, revised but never rebuilt: nothing after Schumpeter gets a chapter, so the last seventy years of the field happen offstage. Heilbroner's summaries are so smooth you can mistake having read him for having read Smith or Marx. A brilliant map that some readers never leave.
Business & Investing · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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