Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Passions and the Interests

If you are teaching an Honors section of Econ 101 at a liberal arts college, let me recommend the following book: The Passions and the Interests by A.O. Hirschman. I am roughly halfway through and find it very interesting. You might think of it as a crash course in the history of ideas from Augustine to Smith. The evolution of basic concepts in economics (self-interest, rationality, spontaneous order, etc) as presented by Hirschman is fascinating.

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