Customer Reviews

The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers [7th Edition]

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I read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" back in college my senior year, all 1200+ pages of it. I've read parts of Communist Manifesto and Capital by Karl Marx and some Joseph Schumpeter. I loved it all (especially Smith and Schumpeter) but it was BRUTAL as the dialects in those days varied so much from today's.

If you are new to economics or want summaries/insights into the greatest economists in history this book is for you. Mr. Heilbroner's book, the Worldly Philosophers, is the best books on economics I have come across and I have endured graduate level economic courses, both macro and micro (along with the undergraduate courses.) This book provides readers with a nice summary and analysis of the great Economic thinkers from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, David Ricardo, Mill, Keynes, Schumpeter and others. I found the book to be very general and not extremely analytical/scholarly if you will.

The summaries of each man's economic concepts and life/times in which he lived were extremely accurate. Additionally, I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that the author tries to explain the multi-disciplined nature of economics and how it is a combination of sociology, history, political science and philosophy all rapped into one. If you look at the London School of Economics graduate program you will find over 30 unique Masters Programs in economics as the field is increasingly becoming applied and specialized into different parts of the society. Mr. Heilbroner asks a question at the end such as "are we seeing the end of Worldly Philosophers?" as the field is increasingly getting more specialized and very few economists are tackling the "big picture" anymore and how the various components of an economy (land, labor and capital) are intertwined with each other. Definitely something to think about.....

I found myself sitting down and reading a chapter at a time, 50-60 pages, with no problems at all. Mr. Heilbroner doesn't give you everything but perhaps enough to chomp your teeth into the works of each philosopher on your own. At the end of the book he has a list of suggested readings for those seeking more information on any of the economists/subjects mentioned but, frankly, I don't think many can handle 99% of the stuff.

I approached this book with the thought that "Ok, ok, I know I've got to get around to reading more about these guys sooner or later" attitude. What a fortunate find, and great way to begin!

The author takes a subject (economics) that is often beyond dry and makes it both entertaining and educational, with lots of surprises thrown in. Every time I thought I had caught the author in a mistake or an oversight (Ah ha! Now I've got you!) he'd cover my questions or thoughts within the next couple of pages or so. The author earned my confidence again and again. I found him to be a reliable guide through treacherous waters.

There's a lot of good history in this book. He tackles each major economic philosopher (and others), makes the man come alive in the context of his times, and relates his thinking to our own time by putting their ideas to the test of subsequent history. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Smith and Keynes.

The author, like any good educator, doesn't give you everything. He gives you lots of food for thought. I also found the author to be thoughtful and unpretentious. I plan to read more books by him.

My copy also contained a very nice description of suggested readings.

I've read both Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner and New Ideas From Dead Economists, by Todd Buchholz. I wanted to get a good rounded layperson introduction to great economists in the past.

However, I found Heilbroner's book to be neither useful to the layperson nor to people who have a good background in Economics. Let me explain.

Heilbroner spends a LOT of time in awe of these economists and spends a great deal of time explaining how great they were, how revolutionary, how brilliant, how much of a genius, how wonderful these men were, ad nauseum. Ok, I get the point. Unfortunately, all this fawning and fan worship clouds what should've been the more interesting and more important part of the book, which are the central economic ideas put forward by these thinkers. In fact, there's a lot of emphasis on putting their economic ideas in perspective to the prevailing moral philosophical thought at the time.

It's almost as if this books is written for people who have already taken Economics 101, and know all the basic economic principles and can nod, "yes, uh huh, I didn't know those personality quirks or their moral philosophical outlook about these economists - good to know. By the way, it's great that he didn't go over his economic ideas since I already know them."

For example, the entire chapter devoted to David Ricardo fails to mention the theory of Comparative Advantage anywhere in the chapter. Isn't that a MAJOR omission? That's just one example. Omissions such as this are everywhere.

So the layperson is stuck getting a vague feeling that these people were wonderful people, but that a little less fuzzy on their ecnomic ideas. It also leaves a person with economics background feeling like this is less a book about economics and more a book about Heilbroner's fan worship.

Neither audience is served. I can't recommend this book.

Right after I read this book, I read Todd Buchholz's New Ideas From Dead Economists.

Where Heilbroner failed, Buccholz succeeds in so many ways. He puts the central ideas of these economists as the main focus of each chapter. When talking about David Rircardo, the theory of Comparative Advantage is front-and-center. When talking about Marx, Heilbroner meanders and throws a lot of Marx's ideas around and you don't get a sense of how they all fit together in Marx's mind or why modern economists find fundamental flaws in his reasoning. In Buccholz's book, the central point is Marx's ideas, how they fit together and it's very clear why most economists (and the reader) will find Marx's basic premise wrong in light of emperical evidence. This goes on and on.

I initially thought Heilbroner would be a good read, since it was recommended by econ majors when I was in college and they'd never heard of Buccholz's book. I'm glad I read both.

Do yourself a favor and don't waste your time/money - read the better book.

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.

As an economics major in college, I found this to be the most interesting economics book I've read in the field and highly recommend it to anyone who has any interest in business, economics, or history. It reads like a good novel as it covers each economist's thoughts and lives, and leads up to the present time. After my older copy wore out, I bought the newer edition. I was disappointed to hear that the author recently passed away, thereby making this the final edition (unless others revise it). Another interesting introductory book is "New Ideas from Dead Economists" which I would recommend after Robert Heilbroner's book.

I first found this book while browsing in an up-scale book store in Madras, India. I devoured it, idea by idea, while riding the rails of the Indian train system. As a graduate student from a U.S. University, doing research in India, the book provided me with a concise refresher regarding modern economic thought. Furthermore, I found that the book made sense of the economic transformations that I was witnessing - not only in my research in Indian history, but also in my observation of India's dramatic, modern economic growth. Now that I am a professor of history, I always recommend this particular work to students who want to get a grasp of the foundations of modern economic thought in one place, and in clear, intelligible language. I assign this book in undergraduate courses where it is appropriate, and if I had graduate students, I would make it a required part of their reading list. If my house were burning down, and I could save only twenty books from my library, this would be one of them.

In my 20th Century American Literature class we recently read Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." In conjunction with the book we watched "Roger and Me," a film by Michael Moore. The film chronicles the social collapse of Flint, Michigan, after General Motors closed several factories there in the late 1980's during a time of record profits. How ironic, then, that I should find myself reading a history of economics during a three-hour layover in an airport in Detroit, the Motor City.

I picked up a copy of Robert L. Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers for next to nothing at the Salvation Army. The cover suggests a retail price of a mere $..., a more significant sum back in 1961 when the revised edition was published. Heilbroner's book, however, is not weakened at all by its age. He sets out not to explicate his contemporary economy, but rather to recount the history of political economy by examining its greatest thinkers, beginning with Adam Smith and ending with John Maynard Keynes.

Before any of the biographies, however, there is a wonderful section on the origins of the market system. Heilbroner explains that until the 18th century, capitalism and the market system did not exist as we know them today. The lack of national unity and universal weights, measures, and currency made trade cumbersome. In addition to these impediments, the idea of seeking personal profit was not socially or religiously condoned. (Heilbroner cites an amusing case before the Boston courts in 1644 where a man was charged with making a "sixpence profit on the shilling, an outrageous gain.") Moreover, the economic concepts of Land, Labor, and Capital did not exist. Things began to shift radically in the 18th century, however, spurred along by the Industrial Revolution. As the free market system began to emerge, so did political economists. They form a most interesting pantheon: some pragmatic, some pure geniuses, nearly all eccentric in some way. ("One of them-who was very rich-urged the abolition of riches; another-quite poor-disapproved of charity.") Heilbroner humanizes these philosophers and paints a vivid picture of the worlds in which they lived. By providing such insightful biographical information he gives greater meaning to the economic theories espoused by each. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has an intellectual curiosity about economics but is discouraged at the thought of aggregate supply curves or equations like Sa+M+T = Ig+X+G. Heilbroner is able to explain the theories of Marx, Malthus, Keynes, and the rest in a purely theoretical, yet non-mathematical, way. I do not mean to suggest, however, that the book is a simplistic read. It has a scholarly (but entertaining) style and I found it quite handy to have a dictionary nearby. (Heilbroner graduated summa cum laude from Harvard.)

This book contains the perfect blend of economic theory, history, and intriguing biography. Perhaps none of these men directly swayed the fates of nations, but their collective school of thought could hardly be more influential throughout history. In the words of Heilbroner: "A man who thinks economics is only a matter for professors forgets that this is the science that has sent men to the barricades. A man who has looked into an economics textbook and concluded that economics is boring is like a man who has read a primer on logistics and decided that the study of warfare must be dull."

This is without question one of the finest popular introductions to any subject written in the past several decades. Heilbroner does not intend this as a full-fledged introduction to economics and certainly could never serve as an introduction to the subject in a classroom setting, but it is an exceedingly well-written, highly informed, enormously entertaining first-dip into what Carlyle called "the dismal science." Although Heilbroner does not neglect either historical context or the ideas driving the worldly philosophers, the account is distinguished by great attention to the lives of the leading economists. He is throughout as concerned to have us get to know the men behind the ideas as the ideas themselves.

I suspect that part of Heilbroner's motivation in focusing so much on the lives of the great economists is that so many of them were such interesting individuals that their very existences dispel some of the stereotype of economics being dull and dry. Mind you, not even Heilbroner's lively pen can enliven some of these individuals' lives. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Alfred Marshall lived remarkably uneventful lives. But Heilbroner is at his best depicting the marvelously odd friendship of Malthus and Ricardo, the quirks of Saint-Simon and Henry George, the wonderful eccentricity of Thorstein Veblen, and the easy genius of John Maynard Keynes. Not that Heilbroner neglects the ideas. He writes wonderfully about many of the key ideas driving the thought of each of these thinkers, but he neither tries to be exhaustive (he barely touches on the highpoints of Marx, for instance) nor attempt to detach them from the context of particular individuals living at a particular juncture in history.

I have to say something about Heilbroner's style. Today, unfortunately, too many scholars simply cannot write. This has always been true to an extent, but fewer and fewer academics seem to foster the ability to write mellifluous sentences. Heilbroner does not belong to their ranks. He resembles fellow scholars such as Lewis Thomas and Simon Schama in his ability to write memorably, cleverly, and clearly. The degree to which this enhances the value of the book as a whole cannot be overemphasized.

Finally, because today virtually all talk of economics passes easily into political economy, I should say something about Heilbroner's own point of view. I say "point of view" rather than "bias" simply because the latter is one of--if not THE--most abused terms in the United States today (it is not abused in other countries). Talk of "bias" rather than truth or falsity arose in the early 1970s when many conservatives realized that they had lost the debates of the sixties. Unable to win arguments on a level playing field, conservatives wanting to infiltrate the mass media concocted the plan of redefining discussion of contemporary issues in terms of bias rather than truth. Instead of an idea being discussed in terms of its ultimate rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, the Right (largely in response to the famous Powell memo--just Google "Powell" and "memo"--for a world of resources on this--Lewis Powell, by the way, late in life while still on the Supreme Court came to feel that his position in the memo was mistaken) wanted to change the terms of the debate to the particular points of view of the individuals involved (he said, she said). Part of this involved the invention of the myth of the liberal media. The media, they argued, was biased, it was liberal (though it certainly was not liberal). My point is this: having a point of view does not equate to bias, and even having a bias does not mean that one warps the facts to fit one's position. I do not think that Heilbroner is "biased." But his positions do place him at a particular point on the political spectrum. He is very far to the left. Though not perfect, he thinks the reforms of the New Deal were a very good thing indeed. But he is far more to the left than that: he thinks socialism has much to recommend, but he is a realist in that he believes we are, for good or ill, stuck with a capitalist system. At least for now. Thus we do not find a near worship of the ideas of Adam Smith (though in fact most on the Right who bring up Smith actually are talking about the Vienna School's imaginative recreation of him and not the historical Adam Smith) nor a knee jerk dismissal of Keynes or even Marx. I would, in fact, say that throughout Heilbroner, though a leftist, treats all the major figures rather fairly. Had he in later editions of his book extended his book beyond Schumpeter, who ends the book, to include von Mises, Hayek, Polanyi, Samuelson, Arrow, Friedman, Sen, and others, he might have found some he would have found more (Polanyi, Samuelson, Arrow, and Sen) congenial and others he would have found less (von Mises, Hayek, and Friedman). What I want to emphasize he how balanced Heilbroner is.

I heartily recommend this to anyone wanting an introduction to the history of economic thinking. It is hard to find a more successful popular introduction to an intellectual discipline than this. Although first published in the early 1950s, Heilbroner revised it repeatedly during his lifetime, the final time in the late nineties. For a highly readable introduction to the first two hundred years of economic thinking, it can hardly be surpassed.

Heilbroner is a gifted writer with a flare for illuminating the lives and times of the great economic thinkers who are the subject of the book. Therein lies both the major strength and the major weakness of The Worldly Philosophers.

The major strength is that the book is an engaging read, especially considering its subject matter. In particular, Heilbroner paints a compelling picture of the lives of John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx.

His chapter on Marx may be the book's highlight, since an understanding of Marx's embittered worldview may provide a clue to the oppressive atmosphere engendered by Marxism, both within societies that subscribed to Marxist doctrine and within the movement itself. Especially illuminating is French Socialist Pierre Proudhon's response to Marx's offer to join forces: "Let us together seek, if you wish, the laws of society, the manner in which these laws are reached, the process by which we shall succeed in discovering them; but, for God's sake, after having demolished all the a priori dogmatisms, do not let us in our turn dream of indoctrinating the people. . . . I applaud with all my heart your thought of inviting all shades of opinion; let us carry on a good and loyal polemic, let us give the world the example of an informed and farsighted tolerance, but let us not--simply because we are at the head of a movement--make ourselves into the leaders of a new intolerance, let us not pose as the apostles of a new religion, even if it be the religion of logic, the religion of reason. Let us gather together and encourage all dissent, let us outlaw all exclusiveness, all mysticism, let us never regard a question as exhausted, and when we have used one last argument, let us if necessary begin again--with eloquence and irony. On these conditions, I will gladly enter into your association. Otherwise, no!"

In response to this plea for a movement free of dogmatism, Heilbroner explains, "Marx's answer was this: Proudhon had written a book called The Philosophy of Poverty; Marx now annihilated it with a rejoinder entitled The Poverty of Philosophy."

Thus, at times, spotlighting the lives of these economic thinkers can facilitate an effective critique of their ideas. Yet this book is at its worst when it focuses almost exclusively on the lives of the great economic thinkers and the context in which they wrote, while paying too little heed to their theories. After all, the reason the reader will be interested in these thinkers is not necessarily because they lived compelling lives (many did not), but because they had compelling ideas. Yet too often the book will provide an engaging snapshot of the lives that these men lived, while providing only the briefest glimpse of their theories. Furthermore, criticism of their theories is often relegated to the last 3 to 4 pages of a 30-page chapter, and thus lacks the depth it deserves.

For example, in the chapter on Marx, Heilbroner notes that Marx made a mathematical error. He then spends an entire paragraph discussing how the mistake is not irreperable, "and by going through an even worse tangle of mathematics one can make the Marxist equations come out 'right.'" He goes on to discuss how the critics seized on the mistake too quickly and did not pay attention when the mistake was rectified. However, in this instance, the reader cannot determine whether the mistake was indeed significant, or if it were rectified, without knowing what it was--information that Heilbroner does not deem sufficiently important to provide.

This book is recommended for somebody who is either interested in brief biographical sketches of the great economic thinkers or somebody who is interested in snapshots of their theories. But a reader with a basic familiarity with the economic thinkers who is looking for more discussion of theory, or more substance in general, should be encouraged to look elsewhere.

I have read books on the history of economics and economic thought before, and this one is a mixed bag. The chapters on Smith, Ricardo and Malthus are well written and informative. Heilbroner brings Smith's basic ideas to life in well formulated prose and clear exposition. He also lays to rest the myth that Smith is simply an apologist for the capitalist class.

However, with few exceptions, one gets the impression after reading this book that the history of economic thought is nothing but the apologetic bourgeoisie professoriat versus the ignored socialist saviors. His chapter on Marx leaves much to be desired; I expected more depth and a less equivocal discussion. Marx's system is more than economic and does not just have problems with an inadequate theory of value. Considering the inclusion of a chapter on Thorstein Veblen, whose works are clearly more sociological than economic, it is odd to omit a more thorough discussion of Marx.

I found the discussion of Mill to be simply misleading. If my reading of Mill is correct, then he did not come to have socialist leanings until late in his life. Indeed, Mill is usually cited as a defender of laissez-faire. Mill was not consistently supportive of any specific economic system. He opposed a progressive income tax yet favored a limit on inheritance. He favored nationalization of the railways yet also the existence of private joint-stock corporations. One cannot claim Mill as a socialist without qualification, and Heilbroner is guilty of serious misrepresentation of Mill's actual beliefs.

There are other problems, for example, his discussion of the Great Depression. To claim that economists of the day had no idea what to do is simply false. The economists who vehemently protested government interventions such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff certainly did something. Indeed, there were more than 1,000 of them from 179 institutions who urged Hoover not to enact the Tariff; the Tariff is thought to be an important factor in causing the Depression.

The worst omission, and by far the least forgivable, is that of marginalized schools of economic thought. One would think a man with socialist tendencies would want to bring the less heard voices of economics to the light. They certainly merit at least a mention in the book's reading list, yet they get none. For example, no mention is made of the contributions of the Austrian school.

I realize this is a general book for the non-specialized reader. That does not excuse Heilbroner from painting a one-sided portrait of economics. As a brief discussion of some important historical figures this book only moderately satisfies. As an introduction to economic history or thought it is generally poor. "A History of Economic Thought" by Lionel Robbins would be a much better choice.