Good news! The brand-new fourth edition of “The Making of Modern Economics” has just been published by the prestigious publisher Routledge (publisher of the works of Friedrich Hayek).
And it’s available for half off the retail price and shipping!
Guess who the hero is of my book? See the cover below.
It is now the most popular history textbook of the great economic thinkers used in the classroom. As Roger Garrison, professor at Auburn University, states, “My students love it. Skousen makes the history of economics come alive like no other textbook.”
But it’s not just a book for students and academics. People of all walks of life enjoy reading it. As John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, says, “Mark’s book is fun to read on every page. I have read it three times. I love this book and have recommended it to dozens of my friends.”
It’s unique in that you can jump around and read any chapter you want; each chapter stands on its own; and it’s loaded with stories, anecdotes, humorous episodes, pictures and even musical selections for each chapter.
Winner of Several Awards
The book is award-winning. It has won the Choice Book Award for Academic Excellence, and it was ranked #2 Best Libertarian Books in Economics by the Ayn Rand Institute (behind Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson”). It was the Main Selection of the Boulder Book Club.
If you order directly from me you save half off the publisher’s price and shipping – you pay only $35, and I pay the postage and autograph each copy. To order, go to www.skousenbooks.com.
A Rarely-Told Story of High Drama
First and foremost, the book tells the remarkable untold story of free-market capitalism’s long-running battle against Keynesianism, Marxism, socialism and other isms. It is an account of high drama with a singular heroic figure, Adam Smith and his celebrated “system of natural liberty.” The running plot involves many unexpected twists and turns; sometimes our hero is left for dead, only to be resuscitated by his free-market friends; the story even has a surprise ending.
A Full-Scale Critique of All Major Doctrines
All previous histories tend to give a dry, disjointed, and helter-skelter account of economists and their contradictory theories. But I unify the story of economics by ranking all major economic thinkers either for or against the invisible hand doctrine of Adam Smith. Thus, Marx, Veblen and Keynes are viewed as critics of Smith’s doctrine, while Marshall, Hayek and Friedman are seen as supporters.
Using this ranking system, The Making of Modern Economics offers a full-scale review and critique of every major school and their theories, including classical, Keynesian, monetary, Austrian, institutionalist and Marxist.
A Complete History
Skousen’s history is comprehensive. He makes a point of discussing all schools of economics and not just the ones he agrees with. Too many economists have omitted major characters from the history of economics, a practice bordering on intellectual dishonesty. Robert Heilbroner’s popular book, The Worldly Philosophers, for example, virtually ignores the laissez-faire French, Austrian and Chicago traditions. (His latest edition does not even mention Milton Friedman by name!)
Think of The Making of Modern Economics as a contra-Heilbroner history.
It’s a perfect antidote to all those biased, inaccurate attacks on the free market and its proponents.
The book records the lives and ideas of important economists often ignored in other histories, such as Montesquieu, Ben Franklin, J. B. Say, Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich List, Herbert Spencer, Ludwig von Mises, Knut Wicksell, Philip Wicksteed, Max Weber, Irving Fisher, Roger Babson, Frederick Taylor, A. C. Pigou, Joan Robinson, Paul Sweezy, Paul Samuelson and Murray Rothbard.
My book also restores the vital role of the Austrian and Swedish schools in the marginalist revolution and the development of monetary economics. It emphasizes the impact of other disciplines on economics, such as evolution, sociology, and religion.
“Tell All” Biographies
Skousen’s book brings history alive with exciting new insights into the lives of the great economists through in-depth biographies and the author’s own research, revealing an amazing tale of idle dreamers, academic scribblers, occasional quacks and madmen in authority.
The Making of Modern Economics does its best to entertain, with provocative sidebars, humorous anecdotes, even music selections reflecting the spirit of each major economist. Samples:
Why Adam Smith burned his clothes…and then burned his papers.
The “satanic verses” of the poet Karl Marx.
Were Malthus, Ricardo, Marshall and Keynes anti-female?
The infamous grading technique of Chicago’s Jacob Viner (he regularly flunked a third of his class).
The sexual scandals of Karl Marx, Carl Menger, Joseph Schumpeter and Friedrich Hayek.
The story behind Marx the phrenologist, Jevons the astrologer, Keynes the palm reader, and Friedman the amateur hand-writing analyst.
Which famous economist is buried next to rock star Jim Morrison in Paris?
How Darwin and Wallace discover their theory of evolution after reading Malthus.
Why Malthus and the doomsdayers have been proven wrong about overpopulation and environmental crises.
The strange case of David Ricardo: Why Schumpeter, Keynes, and Samuelson admired him–and deplored him.
Why Malthus refused to have his portrait made until age 67.
Why Hayek blames John Stuart Mill, a hero of classical liberalism, for popularizing socialism among intellectuals in the 19th century.
The real origin of the epithet “dismal science,” and why critics are now calling economics the “imperial” science, with ever-increasing applications in law, finance, history, and politics.
How John Stuart Mill and the disciples of David Ricardo became hostage to the Marxists, and how Carl Menger and the Austrians revived the laissez faire model of Adam Smith from oblivion.
The inside story of three multi-millionaire economists–David Ricardo, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes.
The bizarre story of Jeremy Bentham: from democratic reformist to utilitarian fascist.
The socialist origins of the American Economic Association and the London School of Economics.
Veblen’s incredible prophecies about World War I and II.
Thorstein Veblen versus Max Weber: Who had a better vision of capitalism?
How Irving Fisher became an advisor to the fascist Mussolini.
The little-known story of how the economics establishment in the West (including economists at Cambridge, Harvard and Yale) failed to forecast the 1929-32 economic collapse.
How Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek were able to predict the 1929-33 crisis, yet failed to convince the world of their theories.
How the 1929 crash served as a catalyst for Keynes’s “general theory.”
How Keynes saved the world from Marxism in the 1930s.
The truth about Keynes’s homosexuality and the rumor that his Cambridge colleague, A. C. Pigou, was a Soviet spy.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)–how a Keynesian statistic was invented by a Russian.
How Irving Fisher’s misinterpretation of his quantity theory of money led to his losing a fortune on Wall Street, and how Milton Friedman avoided repeating Fisher’s blunder.
Why Friedman and the Chicago school triumphed over Mises and the Austrian school in discrediting Keynesianism and restoring the Adam Smith model of market capitalism.
Fully Illustrated with Over 100 Photos, Portraits and Graphs
Finally, The Making of Modern Economics is the first fully-illustrated history of economics, with over 100 charts, portraits, and photographs, including a picture of….
…Keynes in bed (where he made his millions),
…Eugen Böhm-Bawerk in official regalia as finance minister of Austria,
…Alfred Marshall trying to hide his oversized left hand,
…the preserved body of Jeremy Benthem in London,
…the only known photograph of Irving Fisher smiling (before he lost millions in the stock market), and
…over 75 rare and unusual photos and portraits of famous economists.
Provocative Chapter Titles
Here are the titles of each chapter of The Making of Modern Economics:
- It All Started with Adam (Adam Smith, that is)
- The French Revolution: Laissez Faire Avance!
- The Irreverent Malthus Challenges the New Model of Prosperity
- Tricky Ricardo Takes Economics Down a Dangerous Road
- Milling Around: John Stuart Mill and the Socialists Search for Utopia
- Marx Madness Plunges Economics into a New Dark Age
- Out of the Blue Danube: Menger and the Austrians Reverse the Tide
- Marshalling the Troops: Scientific Economics Comes of Age
- Go West, Young Man: Americans Solve the Distribution Problem in Economics
- The Conspicuous Veblen Versus the Protesting Weber: Two Critics Debate the Meaning of Capitalism
- The Fisher King Tries to Catch the Missing Link in Macroeconomics
- The Missing Mises: Mises (and Wicksell) Make a Major Breakthrough
- The Keynes Mutiny: Capitalism Faces its Greatest Challenge
- Paul Raises the Keynesian Cross: Samuelson and Modern Economics
- Milton’s Paradise: Friedman Leads a Monetary Counterrevolution
- The Creative Destruction of Socialism: The Dark Vision of Joseph Schumpeter
- Dr. Smith Goes to Washington: Market Economies Face New Challenges
Get 50% off (when accounting for free shipping)Thomas by ordering it from the Author
Routledge charges $54.95, plus shipping, but you can buy it directly from the author for only $35. Each copy is autographed, dated and mailed for no extra charge if mailed inside the United States.
To buy your copy, go to www.skousenbooks.com.
Yours for peace, prosperity, and liberty, AEIOU
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