Grand Pursuit

July 11, 2011
Nasar's A Beautiful Mind mined a rich dramatic vein in the story of a solitary mathematical genius. Her new work looks to a broad sweep of modern economic history for similar magicâwith mixed results. While the author rightly sees a vital and indeed dramatic core to the "dismal science," the narrative can feel desultory at times. Tracing the accompanying rise of economic theory in the development of global capitalism, Nasar's cast of (mostly) famous men and women seeks to tackle the increasingly disconcerting problem of widespread want in the midst of enormous concentrations of wealth. Her chronological narrative emphasizes a key tension between antistatist laissez faire ideas and the logic of the modern welfare state. A final chapter on Indian economist Amartya Sen takes us beyond the West briefly, but the book concentrates overwhelmingly on the centers of capitalist power up through WWII. The attempt to squeeze a good story from her subjects can encourage a lopsided accounting, where Marx, for example, becomes a clownish personal figure whose economic ideas are all the easier to dismiss while the contributions of Alfred Marshall are arguably overemphasized. Historiographically thin, the book serves best as a curiosity-piquing introduction to figures and basic themes in modern economic history rather than a definitive study.