Description
Book SynopsisThorstein Veblen’s analysis of America’s parasitic upper class, which plunders its wealth from productive workers, is widely attributed to his outsider status. But Charles Camic shows that Veblen’s ideas did not derive from social marginality. Veblen was a professional economist whose fierce social critique was the work of an academic insider.
Trade ReviewThorstein Veblen may be the most important American thinker most Americans have never heard of…Insightful…Camic’s Veblen is an intellectual flamethrower, torching every school of thought in sight, from the classicism of Adam Smith to the communism of Karl Marx, attempting to clear the ground for a new kind of science…Surrounded as we are by inequality and the flagrant excesses of the super-rich, the power of Veblen’s vision in our own era is obvious. * Wall Street Journal *
Perhaps the most accomplished and certainly the most original American economist of his era, and subject of [this] landmark new biography…Veblen’s ideas inarguably have a new urgency in what many have called our new Gilded Age, as wealth inequality has soared past mid-twentieth century levels to approach that of its namesake…Succeeds in moving Veblen from the margins of fin-de-siècle intellectual life and placing him squarely in the center…This new biography comes at an opportune time. -- Simon Torracinta * Boston Review *
Camic has produced a sort of intellectual biography that largely dispenses with the personal life, while directing intense and illuminating attention to the scholarly milieu in which Veblen emerged. -- Kwame Anthony Appiah * New York Review of Books *
For decades, Thorstein Veblen has been the greatest American thinker without a good biography. An unsparing critic of our last gilded age, he savaged the upper classes, from their manners to the economic theories that justified their wealth, while also offering an alternative view of how the economy ought to work, and for whom…Veblen’s ideas and life are worth recalling, especially now…As a book about how Veblen fits into the history of American economics, this biography is fantastic. -- Paul W. Gleason * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Camic’s intention…is to put an end to a long-standing view of Veblen as an outsider…Invaluable for the information it provides about the curricular specifics of Veblen’s education…What Camic brings into view are inconspicuous but vital parts of the Veblen story. -- Rachel Bowlby * Times Literary Supplement *
A really interesting book…I enjoyed reading
Veblen—one for anybody interested either in the man himself or in the history and sociology of economics. It certainly succeeds in over-turning the prevailing myth that Veblen was an outsider. -- Diane Coyle * Enlightened Economist *
Camic provides an excellent account of how Veblen arrived at [his] contribution to economic theory…A worthy model for historians of the social sciences and sociologists of knowledge. -- Geoffrey Mead * LSE Review of Books *
Camic has written an excellent intellectual biography…Not only excellent but also exemplary. -- Andrew Abbott * American Journal of Sociology *
An intellectual biography of great depth and superb insight. I have read no other biographical volume, on any thinker, that achieves what Camic does in this volume. -- Geoffrey Hodgson * European Journal of the History of Economic Thought *
Camic’s
Veblen weaves together narrative, analytic interpretation, and social theory to create a compelling, engaging, and revolutionary account that tells us something new about a familiar and fascinating figure while conveying a powerful sense of melancholy. There is really nothing quite like it. -- George Steinmetz, University of Michigan
This is a book of profound scholarship produced by a talented sociologist at the height of his intellectual power. Going beyond strict intellectual history to focus on theory, Camic analyzes how Veblen developed a ‘repertoire of knowledge-making practices’ central to his seminal ideas in the first decades of his life as a researcher. The author also locates the concept of conspicuous consumption in Veblen’s broader contribution to the study of nonproductive economic activities. This brilliant book is certainly the definitive contribution to our understanding of Veblen and the context that made his pathbreaking approach possible. -- Michèle Lamont, past president of the American Sociological Association
Veblen changes our perception of a major figure in American social science, showing that he stood at the heart of the emerging economics discipline. Given the enormous literature on Veblen, by historians, sociologists and economists, that is a remarkable achievement. -- Roger Backhouse, University of Birmingham and Erasmus University Rotterdam
