Abstract
In this essay, I review Sylvia Nasar's long awaited new history of economics, Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius. I describe how the book is an economic history of the period 1850-1950, with distinguished economists' stories inserted in appropriate places. Nasar's goal is to show how economists work, but also to show that they are people too-with more than enough warts and foibles to show they are human! I contrast the general view of the role of economics in Grand Pursuit with Robert Heilbroner's remarkably different conception in The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. I also discuss more generally the question of why economists might be interested in their history at all.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 96-102 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Journal of Economic Literature |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2012 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Economics and Econometrics
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