Book Report: Grand Pursuit

I finally finished Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit. I won't do a full book review, but instead give some thoughts.

Basically, the idea of the book was a good one - mini biographies of all of the great economists / economic thinkers. Unfortunately, the execution was imperfect - the structure just didn't work. I think the author's goal was a flowing book, showing the arc of economic thinking. In this way, the book was mostly chronological, so you jump back and forth between individuals. But the chronology wasn't consistent and sometimes would move forward then go back in order to stay with one person before moving to another.

I think I would have preferred a more traditional approach of a full bio of each person in individual chapters.  Sure, this might have been more boring, but I think more useful. With individual chapters, it would have been easier to follow the arc of the person and retain more about them. 

Also, the book gave more biographical detail than was necessary. It is hard to pinpoint exactly, but there are descriptions that could have been done in a couple paragraphs that took many pages instead. And in doing this, I think she spent a little less time on their theories. 

The book covered Keynes and Freeman, Hayek and Schumpeter, Marx and Engels, Marshall, Fisher, and Samuelson, and my favorite, Amartya Sen. But it also included Beatrice and Sydney Webb and Joan Robinson, two that I didn't find necessary.

Though I found the book too long on biography and too short on theory, I will reference it in the future, if only to then do more research on the individuals.