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Rating: 
Summary: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Review: The good news about The Ordinary Business of Life is that it's a wide-ranging history of economic thought from Ancient Greek thinkers to the rational expectations theorists of the late 20th century. Backhouse doesn't idealize his subjects: he scolds modern economists for formulating abstract mathematical models that have little application to problems in the real world. The bad news is that the book is totally lacking in color or personality. Aiming at comprehensive coverage, Backhouse plods from thinker to thinker and school to school. Giants like Smith or Keynes get only 6 or 7 pages of text; lesser thinkers get only a paragraph or two. The effect is like reading a series of encyclopedia articles. Non-economist readers looking for an introduction to the history of economics would be better off starting with a book like Robert Heilbroner's classic The Worldly Philosophers. That way they'll be inspired to read some more.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful combination!
Review: wonderful combination of history, philosophy, biographies, economics. I rivals Heilbroner in getting my attention and imagination. From Greek economics as getting the most out of your "household" to current issues with understanding Hayek, with explantions of Adam Smith and Karl Marx on the way.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful combination!
Review: wonderful combination of history, philosophy, biographies, economics. I rivals Heilbroner in getting my attention and imagination. From Greek economics as getting the most out of your "household" to current issues with understanding Hayek, with explantions of Adam Smith and Karl Marx on the way.
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