I’ve studied Smith and his Scottish contemporaries, off and on, for over fifty years. My whole professional career has been spent at Glasgow University where Smith was both a student and later professor. I thus have a personal affinity to him and his work, all the more so because his published writings were all trailed in his professorial classroom. While I have published extensively on Smith, the particular book of mine that I’ve selected was chosen because I wanted to distill all my scholarship into a volume that would be accessible to non-academics.
This is a scholarly book written by one of the leading commentators on Smith and his time. In a fluently written manner it combines in an enlightening way an account of Smith’s life, as it unfolds in his writings, lectures, correspondence, and friendships, with an engagement with his ideas.
What impressed me was how he steered a course between very detailed biography (which exists) and close detailed dissection of the works (of which there are many), a task he accomplished by providing a deft summary account of Smith’s work alongside a deeply informed account of his milieu.
Adam Smith is celebrated all over the world as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. A few of his ideas - such as the 'Invisible Hand' of the market - have become icons of the modern world. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist, and would never have predicted that the ideas for which he is now best known were his most important. This book, by one of the leading scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment, shows the extent to which The Wealth of Nations and Smith's other great…
What was impressive about this book and what made me recommend it (on the back cover) was how it succeeded in covering the full range of Smith’s work while demonstrating that it possesses a common unifying thread.
The author has already written a learned treatment of Smith (based on his doctoral dissertation); this volume, as befits a designedly introductory book, is written without jargon, in careful, clear prose. While students will gain the most benefit (the purpose of the series of which it is a part), it is, as well as informative, accessible to anyone with an initial interest in Smith, which it will succeed in broadening and deepening.
Almost everyone has heard of Adam Smith, founding father of modern economics and author of Wealth of Nations. There is, however, much more to him than this.
This new introduction gives a crystal clear overview of the entirety of Smith's thought. It demonstrates how Smith's economic theories fit into a larger system of thought that encompasses moral philosophy, philosophy of science, legal and political theory, and aesthetics. Examining the central arguments of his major works, ranging from The Theory of Moral Sentiments to his lectures on jurisprudence and beyond, Smith's thought is explained in its full intellectual and historical context.…
The title of this book unambiguously states its purpose. What, above all, impressed me was how Paganelli, an academic economist, fulfilled this purpose so splendidly. The Wealth of Nations is one of the great books in the history of economics, but it is a large and somewhat intimidating volume, which has meant it has usually been cited without ever being read.
This book systematically and carefully explains the book chapter by chapter but never misses ‘the wood for the trees’. While ideal for students, with guides for future reading, for anyone who just wants to discover what this great book says beyond headline summaries, and why it is important, this is the text to read.
Adam Smith (1723-1790) is famous around the world as the founding father of economics, and his ideas are regularly quoted and invoked by politicians, business leaders, economists, and philosophers. However, considering his fame, few people have actually read the whole of his magnum opus The Wealth of Nations - the first book to describe and lay out many of the concepts that are crucial to modern economic thinking. The Routledge Guidebook to Smith's Wealth of Nations provides an accessible, clear, and concise introduction to the arguments of this most notorious and influential of economic texts. The Guidebook examines:
This is a lively and engaging book that bears its learning lightly. That stylistic presentation is coupled with a broad agenda to counter common assumptions and distortions about Smith, with the aim, as Muller himself declares, to recover Smith’s own intentions from subsequent misreadings.
While opinionated it is even-handed, neither bland nor strident. What singles out this book and what I found distinctively insightful was a lengthy discussion of the differing receptions of Smith’s work in the two-hundred years since his death.
Counter to the popular impression that Adam Smith was a champion of selfishness and greed, Jerry Muller shows that the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations maintained that markets served to promote the well-being of the populace and that government must intervene to counteract the negative effects of the pursuit of self-interest. Smith's analysis went beyond economics to embrace a larger "civilizing project" designed to create a more decent society.
This is a defence of Smith's continuing relevance. It combines an overview of Smith's life and writings together with an assessment of his long-term and enduring contribution.
What is distinctive is that second-half of the book takes up Smith's ideas thematically and analyses them in the light of contemporary issues. Norman's judgment is that mainstream academic discussion of 'economics' is too self-absorbed and would be improved by heeding Smith's inclusive insights. Impressively what could have been a heavy read is conveyed in a readable, accessible style.
'A superb book' Financial Times, Books of the Year
Adam Smith is now widely regarded as 'the father of modern economics' and the most influential economist who ever lived. But what he really thought, and what the implications of his ideas are, remain fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent advocate of capitalism and the freedom of the individual? Or a prime mover of 'market fundamentalism' and an apologist for inequality and human selfishness? Or something else entirely? Jesse Norman's brilliantly conceived \book gives us not just Smith's economics, but his vastly wider intellectual project. Against the turbulent backdrop of Enlightenment…
This book is designed to be an accessible introduction for anyone who has an interest in, or is curious about, Adam Smith. The book was written at the invitation of the publisher, because of my internationally recognised expertise. It presents a rounded picture. Together with an overview of Smith’s life and legacy, it brings out that he was more than the author of The Wealth of Nations, the work for which he is best known, by establishing that he was also an accomplished moral philosopher, social theorist, historian, and literary critic.
I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.
Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.
Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…
A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.
Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…
