The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life Hardcover – April 11, 2004

Shortlisted for the 2005 British Academy Book Prize, The British Academy

One of Strategy & Business's Best Business Books for 2004

The Company of Strangers is a model of how different disciplines can enrich each other to explain human progress.---George Peden, Times Literary Supplement

A welcome and important contribution. . . . The Company of Strangers exemplifies a new breed of economic analysis, seeking answers to fundamental questions wherever they are found and ignoring disciplinary boundaries. . . . [It] is highly readable and will be accessible to a wide audience.---Herbert Gintis, Nature

A very unusual new book about economics, and much else besides. . . . Elaborate co-operation outside the family, but within the same species, is confined to humans. The requirements for such co-operation, and hence for modern economic life, which is founded on specialization and an infinitely elaborated division of labor, are more demanding than you might suppose. . . . The fact that things could have turned out so differently makes the modern global economy, with all its awesome productivity, seem even more miraculous. (The Economist)

A clear, thought-provoking and elegant book.---Howard Davies, Times Higher Education Supplement

An important and timely book.---Giles Whittell, The Times (London)

An entertaining, wide-ranging account about how the economy evolved in a way that allowed strangers, even potentially hostile strangers, to cooperate and even collaborate within market-based institutionsŠ. Seabright tells the story of how human beings, despite their genetic predisposition toward violent and even murderous behavior, have managed to produce a complex civilization through market-based institutions. (Choice)

We now depend on the efforts of many strangers for our lives. In these days of terror and conflict, Seabright's stunning exploration of this human social experiment is timely. . . . This is a book every concerned citizen should read, along with anybody in business who ever has to tangle with government regulations or the law, and who wants to understand why those relationships are so complex.---Diane Coyle, Strategy and Business

A brilliant book.---Martin Wolf, Financial Times

"No one, economist or civilian, could turn the pages of this book without spotting, time and again, some unexpected and arresting idea that really wants to be thought about. Paul Seabright takes the evolutionary point of view seriously and asks how human institutions make social life possible at all, especially when the many people on whom we depend for our subsistence are strangers. From biology to banking, it is a lively landscape."--Robert M. Solow, Institute Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences

"For too long, economists have been talking only to each other. Paul Seabright's achievement is to locate economics firmly in the mainstream of modern intellectual life, and to do so with style and verve."--John Kay, author ofThe Truth about Markets, columnist for the Financial Times

"The Company of Strangers is a gem--an undiluted delight to read. It addresses some of the most central problems of social science with compelling arguments, lightly worn rigor and erudition, and utterly jargon-free language. Seabright has an amazing eye for the telling detail, whether drawn from fiction, biology, social science or current news. I can think of no better introduction to the problem of social order-how is it possible?"--Jon Elster, Robert K. Merton Professor of Social Science, Columbia University, author of Alchemies of the Mind and Ulysses and the Sirens

"The division of labor among strangers is humankind's most momentous invention, on which all modern society depends. Yet since Adam Smith pointed this out in 1776, the question of how such relations between strangers are possible has continued to puzzle us. Now Paul Seabright deepens, adjusts, and extends the idea in the light of what we now know from psychology, genetics, and economics about human motives. Drawing on an extraordinary breadth of study, he explains how, unique among species, we found ourselves with a nature that equipped us to build this division of labor and so come to treat strangers as honorary friends."--Matt Ridley, author ofNature Via Nurture and The Origins of Virtue

"Fascinating. If you really want to understand who we are today, and how we make a living, readThe Company of Strangers to learn how, some 200, 500, even 140,000 years ago, we grew and evolved--in rather amazing ways."--Shlomo Maital, author ofExecutive Economics: Ten Essential Tools for Managers

"This is a wonderful book, very well written and accessible to a wide audience."--Diane Coyle, author ofParadoxes of Prosperity and Sex and Drugs and Economics