Todd G. Buchholz

I learned an amazing amount from this book which will translate immediately into me teaching an amazing amount in a Jan term course on economic and financial thought in a few weeks.

Buchholz's history of economic thought is very readable with his witty humor. It definitely helps to have at least had some principles classes to completely understand the thoughts he explains, but he uses some simple explanations that are easy to follow. The history is great.

I now understand the syntheses of the economic schools more completely. My favorite line in the book is that "it is no longer possible to separate (modern, mainstream) economists into Keynesian and Monetarist camps." Both sides have learned from the other.

Buchholz pretty obviously has Keynesian readings (at least it was obvious to me) as he knocks a little too hard on the Monetarists and the Rational Expectations schools. But he's mostly fair (if not too simplistic) in his arguments.

This edition doesn't cover Behaviorialists or Austrians (although he mentions Hayek a few times). I assume the 2007 edition would include them and fix the typos I found.

In all, I give it 4 stars out of 5.… (mere)

I don't know too much about economics, but I want to know more, and so this book wasn't a bad place to start my economic education. Buchholz's book is written for the absolute beginner, and, while can be dry in places, the author is good at describing complicated ideas, like Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage, into language that laypeople can understand. He's also admirably even-handed, scrupulously comparing the advantages and disadvantages of every economic theory he covers and describing what each has contributes to the economic canon as it is understood today. "New Ideas from Dead Economists" covers three centuries or so of economic thinking in about three hundred pages, so it's not an in-depth analysis, but I'm sure that it's pointed many readers toward other, more serious works. It's not perfect: the author spent more time on the biographies of the thinkers he profiled than was strictly necessary, and he is, sadly, not as funny a writer as he seems to think he is, though I suppose that he might qualify as "funny for an economist." He's also, to his credit, a real optimist, and works hard to convince he is reader's that his subject is less dismal than it's reputed to be: he argues that economics does more than just study economic behavior, it also provides some insight into human nature and outlines the course that human progress might take. A good read, in a 100-level sort of way.… (mere)