Robert Solow Book Review on Economic Genuises

Robert Solow is a distinguished economist who holds a Nobel prize for his work. He wrote this book review in The New Republic which adds much value to the book under review. The book is about the lives of several economists that the author regards as geniuses. The book is more about their personal lives than their contributions to economic thought. Solow concedes that this makes for better reading, but he felt an obligation to highlight some of the seminal ideas of the economists described in the book. He did this very well. In doing so he provides an excellent overview of economic history, beginning with the Malthusian problem which led to economics being called the dismal science because he argued that as wages increase food consumption would outpace food production and place a limit on the standard of living that was possible. Solow also does an excellent job of distilling the ideas of Keynes and Hayec in a readable fashion. He does a much better job on this than one would find in most textbooks.