Grand pursuit
Subtitle: the story of economic genius
By: Sylvia Nasar
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 2012
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781841154565
Subjects: History; Economic man; Economists; Economics; Economic history
Description: A brilliant new approach to the story of modern economics and to understanding how we got into today's financial mess. As the twenty-first century faces new and ever more daunting economic obstacles, Sylvia Nasar tells the story of how our financial world came to function as it does today, and how a handful of men and women would change the lives of every person on the planet. Economics was not always associated with bankers and excess, or with recessions and bailouts. Economics, as we know it, was born in the nineteenth century when Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew chronicled the destitution in London's slums and wanted to turn money into a force for social good. Man's material fate would be placed in his own hands, rather than left to destiny. The torch would be carried on by everyone from Marx and Engels to Keynes and Friedman, with revolutionary results.
Notes: Originally published: 2011.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: ACT I HOPE; title: Prologue: Mr. Sentiment Versus Scrooge; title: ch. I Perfectly New: Engels and Marx in the Age of Miracles; title: ch. II Must There Be a Proletariat? Marshall's Patron Saint; title: ch. III Miss Potter's Profession: Webb and the Housekeeping State; title: ch. IV Cross of Gold: Fisher and the Money Illusion; title: ch. V Creative Destruction: Schumpeter and Economic Evolution; title: ACT II FEAR; title: Prologue: War of the Worlds; title: ch. VI The Last Days of Mankind: Schumpeter in Vienna; title: ch. VII Europe Is Dying: Keynes at Versailles; title: ch. VIII The Joyless Street: Schumpeter and Hayek in Vienna; title: ch. IX Immaterial Devices of the Mind: Keynes and Fisher in the 1920s; title: ch. X Magneto Trouble: Keynes and Fisher in the Great Depression; title: ch. XI Experiments: Webb and Robinson in the 1930s; title: ch. XII The Economists' War: Keynes and Friedman at the Treasury; title: ch. XIII Exile: Schumpeter and Hayek in World War II; title: ACT III CONFIDENCE; title: Prologue: Nothing to Fear.; title: Contents note continued: ch. XIV Past and Future: Keynes at Bretton Woods; title: ch. XV The Road from Serfdom: Hayek and the German Miracle; title: ch. XVI Instruments of Mastery: Samuelson Goes to Washington; title: ch. XVII Grand Illusion: Robinson in Moscow and Beijing; title: ch. XVIII Tryst with Destiny: Sen in Calcutta and Cambridge.