Why read Adam Smith in His Time and Ours?

Book cover of Adam Smith in His Time and Ours

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Adam Smith in His Time and Ours as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Christopher J. Berry

Author

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.

From Christopher's list on who Adam Smith was and why he's still important.