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What is economics? It is the science of how man satisfies his unlimited wants and needs with limited resources. This science has had many great innovators, and this book introduces the lives and ideas of several of them: namely Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Written at a level accessible to laymen with a high school reading ability, this makes a great introductory work to the history of economic thought. Largely void of equations and graphs; this is not the book to learn about this curve or that curve. However, this is the book to learn about the development of capitalism, financial markets, socialism, globalization, employment policies, welfare economics, etc... Specifically, the six individuals covered in this book span the 1700s thru the 1900s, and contributed mightily to how governments, businesses, and intellectuals thought about the way people and nations make a living. Each of these economist lived in a different age with unique sets of challenges that faced the prevailing world order at that time. Each would produce works of thought that influenced millions of people. This book shows this relationship between each individual, their times, and their contributions to the body of economic thought. The book is laid out in chronological order, so the reader can see how as history changed, man's view of economics change, and likewise, how each economist's publications in turn changed history. Overall a good book; though somehow incomplete. This book deals solely with six economists of the Anglo-Saxon tradition; Europe and the US from the Industrial Revolution onwards. Other parts of the world such as Asia and the Middle East have contributed just as much to world economics; yet they are fully excluded from this book [via]