Marcel Santos's Reviews > A História do Pensamento Econômico

Having read this book soon after Roger Backhouse’s The Penguin History of Economics (História do Pensamento Econômico), it is impossible not to compare them.

All the same impressions on the difficulty of summarizing thousands of years of human economic history, and selecting the “most important” authors and schools of thought and describing them satisfactorily apply here (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

Some additional criticism of Heilbroner’s work may come from the lack of coverage of important characters and schools of thought from the late 19th and also the 20th century. Differently from Backhouse, Heilbroner presents a much narrower yet more focused selection of the greatest characters of all time who tried to explain the economic phenomenon. Backhouse, on the contrary, tries to give a more complete view by covering not only the greatest authors, but also other relevant and most recent tendencies and schools of thought — at the expense of the reading fluidity. Heilbroner basically concentrates his attention on Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Utopian Socialists, Marx, Veblen, Keynes, and Schumpeter.

I read a Brazilian edition of this book from the early 90s, thus many of the criticisms I have may come from the fact that a lot has happened since then. Notwithstanding, questions such as why so much about Utopian Socialists or Thorsten Veblen while Alfred Marshall appears in just a few paragraphs, or the absence of mentioning the importance of the Chicago School, or even any mention of the Austrian School, come to mind. The authors’ option of covering only the greatest Economists of all time and concentrating on them is valid nonetheless.

Three aspects make this a very enjoyable read: (i) the clarity of Heilbroner’s style makes the explanation of Keynes’s and Schumpeter’s complex points of view incredibly easy, for instance; (ii) the presence of many anecdotes of the authors’ biographies make the reader sometimes think the book is a pleasant narrative prose; and (iii) the author’s opinions and criticism, especially in the final chapter, close the book almost perfectly.