New and old ways of looking at the world through the lens of economics

Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery

Nick Schulz, editor of TCS Daily, has an article at OpinionJournal regarding the above book and what it is about.

If you like reading about history and/or economics, you might want to take a peek into one of the many editions of the following book, now in its seventh edition. I've only seen the earliest editions, but they were more interesting and readable than I had expected in a textbook, or with something with the title "The Worldly Philosophers."

No, let me revise that. I have just taken the time to take down a copy of the third edition and read in it a while. This reminded me. This is not a book to "peek into" if that means you will read just parts of chapters. This author sometimes sets some things up to take down - piece by piece if necessary - later in the chapter. If you don't take chapters as a whole, you will be miseducating yourself, very likely.


The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers

I didn't know about the book The Worldly Philosophers until I saw it listed as suggested reading to go along with the well-done course Legacies of Great Economists by Professor Timothy Taylor, available through The Teaching Company. I know "Legacies of Great Economists" sounds like it might be a specialist course, but it isn't. It provides a fair amount of general history, and explains some of the evolution of ideas that have been used and misused by policy makers through the ages.

For the fine print, I am an affiliate of Barnes & Noble, so if you click through on a book cover and buy something on that trip I get a few pennies as a commission. But I have no affiliation with The Teaching Company. I just found that particular course more informative than I'd expected.