Search results for ""author jesse norman""
Penguin Books Ltd Adam Smith: What He Thought, and Why it Matters
'A superb book' Financial Times, Books of the YearAdam Smith is now widely regarded as 'the father of modern economics' and the most influential economist who ever lived. But what he really thought, and what the implications of his ideas are, remain fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent advocate of capitalism and the freedom of the individual? Or a prime mover of 'market fundamentalism' and an apologist for inequality and human selfishness? Or something else entirely? Jesse Norman's brilliantly conceived \book gives us not just Smith's economics, but his vastly wider intellectual project. Against the turbulent backdrop of Enlightenment Scotland, it lays out a succinct and highly engaging account of Smith's life and times, reviews his work as a whole and traces his influence over the past two centuries.But this book is not only a biography. It dispels the myths and debunks the caricatures that have grown up around Adam Smith. It explores Smith's ideas in detail, from ethics to law to economics and government, and the impact of those ideas on thinkers as diverse as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. Far from being simply an economist, Adam Smith emerges as one of the founders of modern social psychology and behavioural theory. Far from being a doctrinaire 'libertarian' or 'neoliberal' thinker, he offers a strikingly modern evolutionary theory of political economy, which recognises the often complementary roles of markets and the state.At a time when economics and politics are ever more polarized between left and right, this book, by offering a Smithian analysis of contemporary markets, predatory capitalism and the 2008 financial crash, returns us to first principles and shows how the lost centre of modern public debate can be recreated. Through Smith's work, it addresses crucial issues of inequality, human dignity and exploitation; and it provides a compelling explanation of why he remains central to any attempt to defend, reform or renew the market system.
£12.99
Biteback Publishing The Winding Stair
Of all revenge, the greatest is this: that which cometh suddenly, without expectation. AMBITION REVENGE Power is shifting. Queen Elizabeth I is dying, James waiting to become King. Everywhere, there is opportunity to ascend. But who will thrive, and who will fail, under the new King? Will it be the scholar Francis Bacon, whose brilliant mind is the envy of the royal court? Or his hated rival the attorney Edward Coke, already acclaimed as the greatest lawyer of his generation? The Winding Stair tells the gripping story of these two founders of our modern world and their battle for power, pre-eminence - and the hand of the most eligible woman in the realm. Combining humour, wit and imagination with deep research, this novel is a dazzling synthesis of history and fiction that takes the genre to new places. It is an epic tale of jealousy and intrigue in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, which, in its lowest moments, holds a darkened mirror to our own contemporary politics.
£18.00
Biteback Publishing The Winding Stair
The Winding Stair tells the gripping story of these two founders of our modern world and their bitter struggle for influence and power.
£10.99