Grand Pursuit: The Story of the People Who Made Modern Economics

(Paperback)

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From the bestselling author of A BEAUTIFUL MIND, a brilliant new approach to the story of modern economics and to understanding how we got into todays financial mess.
As the twenty-first century faces new and ever more daunting economic obstacles, Sylvia Nasar tells the story of how our financial world came to function as it does today, and how a handful of men and women would change the lives of every person on the planet.

Economics was not always associated with bankers and excess, or with recessions and bailouts. Economics, as we know it, was born in the nineteenth century when Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew chronicled the destitution in Londons slums and wanted to turn money into a force for social good. Mans material fate would be placed in his own hands, rather than left to destiny. The torch would be carried on by everyone from Marx and Engels to Keynes and Friedman, with revolutionary results.

Filled with the stories of colourful lives and visions of the characters who shaped modern economics, GRAND PURSUIT is a fascinating history of the determining force of the past century, and a vital insight into how our world works now.

A history of economics which is full of flesh, bloom and warmth ECONOMIST

Reviews

A history of economics which is full of flesh, bloom and warmthGRAND PURSUIT deserves a place not only in every economists study but also on every serious readers bedside table ECONOMIST

Much of GRAND PURSUIT may be a reminder that as bad as things seem now, they have been worse much worse and that those difficult times can shed light on what is happening today. Economists have always tried to come up with theories about how to stimulate flaccid economies. The reader finishes Nasar's book wondering what brilliant and quirky thinker may fill in the next chapters of our economic history and come up with an idea that shakes our current economy out of its funk LOS ANGELES TIMES

A superb writer, fully meeting the standard set by Robert Heilbroner, in his THE WORLDLY PHILOSOPHERS (1953), for graceful writing on a difficult subjectyou can't help becoming engrossed in [her heroes] livesThe book is a kind of portrait gallery of economic thinkers, each artfully set down in his or her time and place WALL STREET JOURNAL

Author Bio

Sylvia Nasar is the author of the bestselling A Beautiful Mind. She is the John S. and James L. Knight Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.