Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius
Sylvia Nasar
Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius
Sylvia Nasar, the author of 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 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.
3.9 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Non-fiction |
| Genre |
Biography, Society, Politics & Philosophy, Business, Finance & Law |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
554 |
| RRP |
|
| Date of Publication |
October 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-1841154558 |
| Publisher |
Fourth Estate |
| |
Sylvia Nasar, the author of 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 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.
Reviews
The Economist
The Economist
“In lesser hands Ms Nasar's story might have degenerated into a series of pen portraits: tittle-tattle for the middlebrow. But she unifies her account with a series of big questions … But it is, nevertheless, odd to end a history of economics without discussing the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the furious arguments it has engendered within the economics profession. Surely the likes of Paul Krugman and Lawrence Summers should have had at least a walk-on role at the close of the story. But that is a blemish in what is generally a wonderful book.”
10/09/2011
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The Independent
Boyd Tonkin
“If you have never read a book about modern economics, make this the first. Sylvia Nasar tells the story of the "dismal science" through shrewd, pacey and (yes) highly enjoyable portraits of its 19th- and 20th-century gurus.”
01/09/2012
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The New Statesman
John Gray
“… an exceptionally original book … The contrast between the shambles at Versailles and the reconstruction of the world economy that came out of Bretton Woods in 1944 is at the heart of Grand Pursuit. The story Nasar tells of the passage from disaster to new world order is gripping and, at times ... disturbing. It is also a story that undermines the inflated claims she makes in the epilogue for economics as a discipline that provides intellectual "instruments of mastery" ... After the crisis of 2008-2009, she writes, the "world financial system did not collapse. There was no second great depression . . . Returning to the nightmare of the past seems increasingly impossible." Strikingly triumphal in tone, this assertion is sharply at odds with the rest of the book.”
10/11/2011
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The New Yorker
Books Briefly Noted
“Ambitious, sprawling ... Nasar is distrustful of thinkers whose theories ignored facts at hand, including Marx, who "never visited a single English factory" while writing Das Kapital. The book's heroes are Alfred Marshall, Beatrice Webb, Irving Fisher, and John Maynard Keynes. They are cast as advocates of a humane middle way — one that neither puts absolute faith in "the invisible hand of compeition" nor rejects the bettering influence of markets, and which considers, instead, "what kind of government intervention in the economy is compatible with a free society."”
28/11/2011
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The New York Times
Justin Fox
“The epic of intellectual progress Nasar wants to tell is not an unmitigated success. It doesn’t entirely square with the facts she so ably digs up. There is frequently tension between her overall theme of progress in economic thought and the individual stories she relates. And her last few chapters offer not a rousing finale, but a muddled letdown. Still, the book as a whole is made up of so many wonderful parts that one is inclined to excuse its shortcomings.”
07/10/2011
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The Literary Review
Martin Vander Weyer
“Grand Pursuit is a good read and a substantial exercise of scholarship, but it has irritating minor flaws; its high intellectual aspirations ought to have been matched by tighter editing. The flow is interrupted by solecisms, oddities and repetitions, some of which will particularly catch the eye of the British reader ... Joseph Chamberlain, proud Birmingham metalbasher and civic leader, must be spinning in his grave at being described as ‘a Manchester industrialist’. Likewise, Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan would be startled to find himself bracketed with Bertrand Russell, ‘Michael Foote’ (sic) and Harold Laski as having been ‘vilified at one time or another as Communist sympathizers or even fellow travellers’.”
01/02/2012
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The New York Times
Michiko Kakutani
“Haphazard … Unfortunately her selection of [economists] is so arbitrary ... that the book fails to give the lay reader an overarching understanding of how modern economic thinking has evolved, or how major schools of thought have fared in light of various political and fiscal developments ... What Ms. Nasar does brilliantly here is give us intimate portraits of her subjects, tracing the ways in which personal experiences informed their thinking.”
01/12/2011
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