The Great Economists is about the 12 most influential economists of all time and how their ideas can help with the problems our time. If you’re not interested in economics, like me, you might like this book.
I don’t have any interest in economics, and therefore I don’t understand it. So for this reason only, I chose to read this book. I read at least one non-fiction book every month and what I’ve learned from these books makes me very happy. With this book, I completely get out of my comfort zone. Most of the time I had to check the dictionary and Google, but I didn’t give up. Thanks to the excitement of learning something new and clear explanations of Yueh, I enjoyed reading it.
Great names and great ideas
Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes are just a few of the names in the book. Their lives and how the period they lived in shaped their ideas are exciting. And there are also juicy parts of their lives as well, so the book is never dull. You can read this book to become familiar with the big names of the field and understand why their ideas are still relevant. On the other hand, you’ll be reading about various subjects like inequality, communism, capitalism, globalisation, and many more exquisite topics. I recommend this book to the readers who have no idea about economics. And the ones who want to get out of their comfort zones. Enjoy!
About the book: The Great Economists
Since the days of Adam Smith, economists have grappled with a series of familiar problems – but often their ideas are hard to digest before we even try to apply them to today’s issues. Linda Yueh is renowned for her combination of erudition, as an accomplished economist herself, and accessibility, as a leading writer and broadcaster in this field; and in The Great Economists she explains the key thoughts of history’s greatest economists, how their lives and times affected their ideas, how our lives have been influenced by their work, and how they could help with the policy challenges that we face today.
In the light of current economic problems, and in particular economic growth, Yueh explores the thoughts of economists from Adam Smith and David Ricardo through Joan Robinson and Milton Friedman to Douglass North and Robert Solow. Along the way, she asks, for example: what do the ideas of Karl Marx tell us about the likely future for the Chinese economy? How does the work of John Maynard Keynes, who argued for government spending to create full employment, help us think about state investment?
And with globalization in trouble, what can we learn about handling Brexit and Trumpism?In one accessible volume, this expert new voice provides an overarching guide to the biggest questions of our time.
About the author: Linda Yueh
Linda Yueh is a British/American economist, broadcaster, and author, born in Taiwan and of dual British and American citizenship. Yueh is an Adjunct Professor of Economics at London Business School, and a Fellow in Economics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University – where she is director of the China Growth Centre.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
