Product Description

In some of Western culture's earliest writings, Hesiod defined the basic economic problem as one of scarce resources, a view still held by most economists. Diocletian tried to save the falling Roman Empire with wage and price fixes--a strategy that has not gone entirely out of style. And just as they did in the late nineteenth century, thinkers trained in physics renovated economic inquiry in the late twentieth century. Taking us from Homer to the frontiers of game theory, this book presents an engrossing history of economics, what Alfred Marshall called "the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life."

While some regard economics as a modern invention, Roger Backhouse shows that economic ideas were influential even in antiquity--and that the origins of contemporary economic thought can be traced back to the ancients. He reveals the genesis of what we have come to think of as economic theory and shows the remarkable but seldom explored impact of economics, natural science, and philosophy on one another. Along the way, he introduces the fascinating characters who have thought about money and markets, including theologians, philosophers, politicians, lawyers, and poets as well as economists themselves. We learn how some of history's most influential concepts arose from specific times and places: from the Stoic notion of natural law to the mercantilism that rose with the European nation-state; from postwar development economics to the recent experimental and statistical economics made possible by affluence and powerful computers.

Vividly written and unprecedented in its integration of ancient and modern economic history, this book is the best history of economics--and among the finest intellectual histories--to be published since Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers. It proves that economics has been anything but "the dismal science."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #666409 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From Library Journal
In his tenth book, Backhouse (economics, Univ. of Birmingham), the editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology, explains how world economics reached its present state. Throughout, he places key figures in an appropriate historical context and then explains the various economic ideas as they emerged, using clear analysis and apt quotations. Starting with Homer, Aristotle, and Alexander, he builds connections to the Roman Empire, Old Testament traditions, and the conflict between Christianity and Islam, then moves on to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and all the way up through Adam Smith and Milton Friedman. The result is a well-integrated, thoughtful, accessible text that makes a major contribution to the history and philosophy of economics. What sets this work apart from others on the subject (e.g., Lionel Robbin's A History of Economic Thought, Robert Heilbronner's The Worldly Philosophers) is the broad time frame and the focus on people and events that shaped the development of economic thought not just the major economists. Important reading for students, professionals, and anyone interested in learning how economics has evolved, this is recommended for all academic and public libraries. Norm Hutcherson, California State Univ. Lib., Bakersfield
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Backhouse, an academic, offers a history of economics from Homer to the frontiers of modern game theory and explains how people historically have perceived and analyzed the economic world. Those responsible for developing economic ideas include theologians, lawyers, philosophers, businessmen, and government officials. The author's main objective is to explain how the discipline of economics reached its present state, and we learn that economics does not have a beginning or a founder; people have always thought about questions that we now consider part of the discipline. He includes famous people such as Adam Smith and Karl Marx but departs from the conventional approach both in relative importance attached to different figures and in many topics, which he includes. While history provides an important frame of reference, the author spends almost half of the book on the twentieth century. This is a scholarly book that will have appeal to well-read library patrons within the general population. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Roger Backhouse has written a history of economics that is sweeping in is historical scope, while also being extremely concise. . . . [A] commendable introduction to the historical context of modern economics. -- Review

Customer Reviews

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The good news about The Ordinary Business of Life is that it's a wide-ranging history of economic thought from Ancient Greek thinkers to the rational expectations theorists of the late 20th century. Backhouse doesn't idealize his subjects: he scolds modern economists for formulating abstract mathematical models that have little application to problems in the real world.

The bad news is that the book is totally lacking in color or personality. Aiming at comprehensive coverage, Backhouse plods from thinker to thinker and school to school. Giants like Smith or Keynes get only 6 or 7 pages of text; lesser thinkers get only a paragraph or two. The effect is like reading a series of encyclopedia articles.

Non-economist readers looking for an introduction to the history of economics would be better off starting with a book like Robert Heilbroner's classic The Worldly Philosophers. That way they'll be inspired to read some more.

Poorly written
Backhouse tries to give a brief, accessible summary of the history of economics, but the book is so dry that it is almost unreadable. Although Backhouse brings in some social and political background, for the most part he's just listing people and theories. His explanations, designed for non-technical readers, are not mathematically complex, and do avoid unneccesary terminology. But they're written in a choppy, condensed style, without illumination from real-world examples. The result is just not compelling reading. And his decision to take his history back to Greek times doesn't really work: the pre-modern thinkers omitted from most standard histories aren't consciously writing about economics. Rather, Backhouse is inferring economic assumptions from literary or ethical discussions. This discussion is potentially interesting (although it suffers from the same flaws as the rest of the book), but not really the same subject-matter as the conventional history of economics.