The Making of Modern Economics, Fourth Edition

The Lives and Ideas of The Great Thinkers

By: Mark Skousen

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

The Making of Modern Economics presents a bold and engaging history of economics—the dramatic story of how the great economic thinkers built today’s rigorous social science.

This comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the major economic philosophers begins with Adam Smith and continues through to the present day. It examines the contributions each one made to our understanding of the role of the economist, the science of economics and economic theory. Each chapter highlights little-known and entertaining facts about the economists’ personal lives that had an influence on their work.

The fourth edition adds coverage of modern monetary theory, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, minimum wage debates, Schumpeter and socialism, Malthus and immigration, and more.

The Making of Modern Economics is a valuable, engaging text for courses in the history of economic thought and political economy.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Mark Skousen (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Best economic history after Rothbard’s.

A SPECTACULAR book covering a broad area; unbiased; kaleidoscopic, and FUN! I thoroughly recommend this book.

Amazing

This book is Well written and Well narrated. It’s also Easy to understand. Learned a lot. Highly recommend

A Remarkable Summary of the Field of Economics.

The Making of Modern Economics is a remarkable summary of the field of economics. Economics is frequently a subject presented in enlightening but dry works. This is an excellent corrective to this fault.

Not great as a history

The author tells you upfront that this is not an unbiased history. I don't know much about the author, but it is pretty clear he extremely libertarian. He has clear heroes (Smith, Friedman, and the Austrian School). Everybody else is a villain to one degree or another, trying to dismantle what Adam Smith built.
I don't mind this, too much, but the problem is, it was not a very well-written book, and it definitely felt that some of his "history" was framed in a disingenuous way. He took a lot of cheap shots at his perceived enemies. The biographies were always a bit sketchy (short), so what he decided to include had to be judicious, Yet he chose to underline petty things like whether someone was a misogynist. Or the fact that every one of somebody's children was mentally ill. This was even more obvious by the structure of the book, where he had subsections with a heading like "Did so-and-so hate the Jews?"
It definitely felt I was not getting an honest portrait of the person, which led me to think I wasn't getting an honest portrait of the ideas. It made me wish I had a Keynesian at my side that could give a different perspective. The problem is that I don't know enough about the history or subject to make judgments on my own, so the book is of little utility.
Also, it isn't a well-organized book. It just seemed jumpy. Perhaps because of those sub-headings.

That being said, I definitely learned some things that piqued my interest to learn more. But I will try and hunt for a more dry objective history next time. Just so I can get the facts of the matter, and an honest overview of the debates.

Biased and Disjointed

Large portions are nothing more than propaganda for free market capitalism, whereas my goal was simply to understand the terminology and development of major economic theories. This was evidently written as a textbook with side panels and digressions, but the audio reading makes no distinction between these and the main text, so that the flow of the main ideas is unpredictably interrupted and resumed. I would never recommend such a doctrinaire and one-sided interpretation of economic history to a beginner to the field. Absolutely worthless and a waste of time.