Sylvia Nasar's excellent book about the people who were the pioneers of modern economics makes a potentially dry subject come to life, largely by focussing on the people and the lives they led, which are certainly not dull. In fact, the likes of Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, Irving Fisher, Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, etc, had important roles in the society and politics of their times, But they all led complicated and interesting personal lives which influenced the way their ideas evolved. The author develops a flowing narrative from their personal and public histories, subtly introducing the ideas that made her subjects important to economics, but at no stage allowing the theoretical stuff to become boring...quite the reverse. This book shows how ideas that have changed society and have become part of everyday thinking were generated out of the lives of real human beings. It is a model of how to interest the general reader in a subject he or she might normally consider a big turn-off. I had a wonderful afternoon reading it on a sunny Autumn day up on the Chiltern hills near Chesham. Yes, it's about economics and I didn't yawn once: magic. Highly recommended.
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