Adam Smith in His Time and Ours Designing the Decent Society [Paperback]

Counter to the popular impression that Adam Smith was a champion of selfishness and greed, Jerry Muller shows that theInquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nationsmaintained that markets served to promote the well-being of the populace and that government must intervene to counteract the negative effects of the pursuit of self-interest. Smith's analysis went beyond economics to embrace a larger civilizing project designed to create a more decent society.

Jerry Z. Mulleris Associate Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He is the author ofThe Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism(Princeton). A profoundly erudite and timely study. ---John Gray,National Review Muller's great accomplishment in this book is to present a clear, thoughtful, and engaging overview of Adam Smith's thought. He reveals Smith to be a wide-ranging and innovative thinker who formulated a comprehensive social science. ---Peter McNamara,The Review of Politics Jerry Muller has written an extraordinarily good book on the most quoted and least read of the worldly philosophers. Robert Heilbroner, Author ofThe Worldly Philosophers A good work of intellectual history should exemplify two qualities above all: animaginationthat allows the author to 'pass over' into the horizon of his subject in order to see the world as the subject sees it; and asympathysuch as to gain a feel for the world of the subject. . . . Like Adam Smith, his subject, intellectual historian Jerry Muller exemplifies these traits to an exceptional degree. Michael Novak,First Things