The Worldly Philosophers : The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers

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Summary: This book was poorly written
Review: This book was not one of my favorites...in fact I didn't like it at all. I think they undermind what it is to be a writter. I don't think this author should write any more books. I had to read this book for my economics class and the whole class struggled through it because they thought it was poorly written. I think it had good points, but the author didn't carry them out in the right way.

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Summary: The World of Economic Ideas
Review: This is a great book about philosophers who layed the foundation for modern economic ideas. It provides a wonderful snapshot of the lives and times of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, J.S. Mill, Thorstein Veblen, J.M. Keynes, and Joseph Schumpeter, along with a synopsis of their economic thought. Professional economists and economic historians will find this book a bit too basic. The intended audience here is the sophisticated general reader interested in intellectual history, especially as it pertains to economics. I also recommend this book to all students of economics, political economy, public policy, and those studying history of Britain of the last two centuries.

Heilbroner is a good writer and brings his subjet to life. Political economy of economically advanced countries is one of my fields of specialization; and I wrote a dissertation on it, using the Internet as an example of a technological field created as a result of cooperation between business, government, and universities. Still, I learned a lot from this book. It has important facts as well as interesting tidbits that will captivate most intelligent readers.

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Summary: Elevating and Entertaining
Review: This is a sinfully enjoyable book. In the first place, it's about the getting and spending, the hope for wealth and the threat of poverty that occupy so much of our energy and emotion. This is a history of economic thought told through the lives and ideas of the most important innovators in this quintessentially modern branch of knowledge. Secondly, it is written in a style that is clear, colloquial, and intelligent. Our author knows his material so well that he can explain without strain. And finally, the organization is about as pleasing a mixture of learning and gossip as one could want. Starting with Adam Smith, going through such as Marx, Mill, and Keynes, and winding up with Joseph Schumpeter, the text treats us to charming and humorous mini-biographies of these unusual fellows along with non-technical (but not trivial!) discussions of their work.

But the title is not misleading: this is neither technical analysis nor, strictly speaking, science. Most of the men (they are all men!) profiled here were interested in larger issues than utility theory or supply-demand curves. Many lived before economics was separated out from more general speculation about society and morals. But even where they confined themselves to what we would call "economic" motives, they wrote prose - in some cases charming or brilliant prose - instead of equations. Economics occupies that intersection of the possibilities of brute nature and our accommodations with each other in society, so its inherently fuzzy subject matter is probably better captured in words than numbers. And life, too, happens to economists, just as it does to everyone: here we see how one's life and times can influence one's ideas. It's good to get a different take on Marx or Smith or Keynes than comes from the noisy network ideologues who yank their thoughts out of their context.

This book has no prerequisite but interest and an enjoyment of good writing on important matters. After all, as Keynes put it: "Practical men, who believe themselves exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."

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Summary: A delightful read!
Review: This is one of those delights that come very rarely in economics. The author wrote for the New Yorker and anyone familiar with the old rambling New Yorker articles that took days to finish reading rather than hours will love this book. The Worldly Philosophers are economists with VISION, so very few mainstream economists are mentioned in this book! Instead Heilbroner takes you on a journey through the most fascinating physical and psychological landscapes.

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Summary: Readable Overview of Major Economic Theorists
Review: This is the latest edition of this popular book. Potential readers need to be clear what this book is and just as important, is not. This is not a systematic history of economic thought or an introduction to economics. This is a basic overview of the ideas of a number of important economic theorists and the backgrounds against which their ideas emerged. Heilbroner is a good writer with an eye for telling anecdotes. He has considerable mastery of source material and is even handed in discussing his subjects. A recurrent theme is the way in which each important thinkers' ideas reflected the experience of capitalism in his time. Some chapters are better than others. I liked particularly the chapter on Marx which does a nice job of discussing the strengths and weaknesses of Marx's analysis. I would personally prefer a more demanding and systematic book but as a very readable and entertaining introduction, this book can't be beat. An excellent volume for an intellectually curious high school student or undergraduate.

Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction
Review: This is the latest version by a historian of economics, Heilbroner. In this book, taking the paradigm of Polanyi, so many classical economists are introduced as gworldly philosophersh like Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Owen, San Simon, Fourier, Mill, Marx, Edgeworth, Frederic Bastiat, Henry George, Hobson, Marshall, Veblen, Keyens, and Schumpeter.
The author shows us the way how we can understand some difficulties of those philosophers, explaining their social background, habitus, characters, whole perspective which the author calls gvisionh, achievements and difficulties from current issue. And because they have affected each other as a matter of fact, some letters which were inserted in this book is effective to touch their personalities. This book can be read as a Euro-American history through those philosophers.
Although there are a few inadequate expressions on anthropological facts and might be philosophy, this book must be fantastic for inviting readers to economics. However, although anthropology or sociology has same challenge, what we want to know at the end must be economy itself rather than thoughts of worldly philosophers. Ifm just a bit afraid this book might produce gstudiers who want to become economistsh rather than h studiers who want to know economyh, unless readers take it into account.

Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction
Review: This is the latest version by a historian of economics, Heilbroner. In this book, taking the paradigm of Polanyi, so many classical economists are introduced as gworldly philosophersh like Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Owen, San Simon, Fourier, Mill, Marx, Edgeworth, Frederic Bastiat, Henry George, Hobson, Marshall, Veblen, Keyens, and Schumpeter.
The author shows us the way how we can understand some difficulties of those philosophers, explaining their social background, habitus, characters, whole perspective which the author calls gvisionh, achievements and difficulties from current issue. And because they have affected each other as a matter of fact, some letters which were inserted in this book is effective to touch their personalities. This book can be read as a Euro-American history through those philosophers.
Although there are a few inadequate expressions on anthropological facts and might be philosophy, this book must be fantastic for inviting readers to economics. However, although anthropology or sociology has same challenge, what we want to know at the end must be economy itself rather than thoughts of worldly philosophers. Ifm just a bit afraid this book might produce gstudiers who want to become economistsh rather than h studiers who want to know economyh, unless readers take it into account.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: This lucid and lively book tells the history of economic thought through the lives and times of great economists such as Smith, Marx, and Keynes. The writing will grab most readers, making the book an ideal introduction to economics for intelligent high schoolers or college students who might be put off by the dryness of the subject. There's no wonder that it's been in print for decades and has gone through numerous editions.

That said, the reader show know that Heilbroner's history stops with Keyenes and Schumpeter, thus ignoring the the revival of market-oriented schools of thought and the collapse of communism. This will strike some readers as a huge omission, perhaps reflective of Heilbroner's advanced age or his aversion to the mathematical emphasis of contemporary economics. Heilbroner would probably argue that no truly fundamental and original contributions have been made to the discipline in the last 50 years. He may be right.

Some Amazon reviewers, apprently of conservative bent, don't understand that The Worldly Philosophers is as much a book of history and biography as it is of economics. To criticize Heilbroner for giving too much space to Marx and none to Friedman or the Austrians is to confuse historical impact and originality with correctness. Marx had a gigantic impact on social thought and world history. The Austrians were (and remain) a smallish cult, whatever their other merits.

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Summary: An Economics book that anyone can read...
Review: Though it won't teach you economics in the academic sense, this is a good introduction to learning how the study of economics developed and the thoughts of major players in the history of the field. It's very well written in a story-like fashion, and when I finished, I was very much interesting in directly reading the works of these worldly philosophers. I've studied economics before, but it was never quite as intersting as this.

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Summary: Unforgivable Omissions
Review: Unbelievably one-sided! And the worst thing is, he lulls you into thinking you're going to get an unbiased account. He begins with a fair assessment of Adam Smith and does manage to be critical of the various socialists he parades in front of us. My first clue as to his socialist leanings was the mere passing reference he pays to Jean-Baptiste Say as part of a long chapter on Ricardo. But it really goes downhill from there. The Austrian school, Laffer's curve and the supply-siders, Milton Friedman and the monetarists: none of it ever happened according to Heilbroner. These are not just slighted - they are not even mentioned. Not one word!