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Dr. Strangelove's Game: A Brief History of Economic Genius
Brilliantly entertaining, Dr. Strangelove’s Game will do for economics what Sophie’s World did for philosophy and E=mc2 for physics.
With the infectious enthusiasm of a great teacher and a novelist’s eye for a colourful parade of often bizarre and idiosyncratic figures, Paul Strathern gives us a vivid account of the world of economics through the lives and minds of those who contributed to the growth of economic thought from the Middle Ages to the present.
The familiar and iconic names – Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes – turn out to be fascinating characters, as do a host of lesser-known figures – from Luca Pacioli, a medieval monk who used a ball game to stimulate thought about probability theory (and gambling) to John von Neumann, the manic genius who invented game theory, worked on the atomic bomb, and was probably the model for Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. There are pessimistic priests, visionary socialists, crackpot academics, and an alleged murderer who controlled France’s finances.
Paul Strathern sets their lives and thoughts against the dramatic backdrop of great events – the South Sea Bubble, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Great Crash. His lightly worn erudition makes Dr. Strangelove’s Game amazingly accessible, leaving readers enriched and enlightened.
From the Hardcover edition.
With the infectious enthusiasm of a great teacher and a novelist’s eye for a colourful parade of often bizarre and idiosyncratic figures, Paul Strathern gives us a vivid account of the world of economics through the lives and minds of those who contributed to the growth of economic thought from the Middle Ages to the present.
The familiar and iconic names – Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes – turn out to be fascinating characters, as do a host of lesser-known figures – from Luca Pacioli, a medieval monk who used a ball game to stimulate thought about probability theory (and gambling) to John von Neumann, the manic genius who invented game theory, worked on the atomic bomb, and was probably the model for Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. There are pessimistic priests, visionary socialists, crackpot academics, and an alleged murderer who controlled France’s finances.
Paul Strathern sets their lives and thoughts against the dramatic backdrop of great events – the South Sea Bubble, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Great Crash. His lightly worn erudition makes Dr. Strangelove’s Game amazingly accessible, leaving readers enriched and enlightened.
From the Hardcover edition.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Paul Strathern
160 books544 followersPaul Strathern (born 1940) is a English writer and academic. He was born in London, and studied at Trinity College, Dublin, after which he served in the Merchant Navy over a period of two years. He then lived on a Greek island. In 1966 he travelled overland to India and the Himalayas. His novel A Season in Abyssinia won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1972.
Besides five novels, he has also written numerous books on science, philosophy, history, literature, medicine and economics.
Besides five novels, he has also written numerous books on science, philosophy, history, literature, medicine and economics.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 12, 2012
It's not often I give a book five stars, and it's not often I read a book three times either. If I were even a shadow of the geniuses described in this captivating history of great economic thinkers then I wouldn't have needed to refresh my memory quite so frequently over the past ten years.
The book traces the history of economics and economic philosophy from the shadowy accounting of Renascence mercantiles, through the age of enlightenment, revolutions, empire, industrialisation, world wars, the great depression through to the post-war development of game theory by John von Neumann (the Strangeloveesque character from which the book gets it's name). An epilogue takes us as far as Milton Friedman and Thatcherism/Reaganomics, and it's just a shame the story ends there with all that has happened since.
The book is part biography and part social history, and places each of the thinkers and their theories (and counter-theories) in the context of their times, and shows how the body of knowledge was developed, and the arguments that have (and still do) rage.
All the expected 'great' thinkers are there (Smith, Mill, Marx, Keynes, etc) but the best chapters for me were on some of the lesser known characters, such as John Law ("The Richest Man Who Ever Lived") who was an exile in France (he was wanted for murder in England) who set up a bank that bankrolled the French Empire. He personally owned 2/3 of modern America and a large amount of Paris, as well as a dozen châteaus, and other estates, before the charlatan ways of his ascent tripped him on the way down and he ended his days in poverty.
Salutatory tales abound, on the excesses and triumphs of economics, and the perils of (literally) making money, but even after three readings I'm still little the wiser as to how or why money works, but then it transpires that neither were many of these great thinkers.
The book traces the history of economics and economic philosophy from the shadowy accounting of Renascence mercantiles, through the age of enlightenment, revolutions, empire, industrialisation, world wars, the great depression through to the post-war development of game theory by John von Neumann (the Strangeloveesque character from which the book gets it's name). An epilogue takes us as far as Milton Friedman and Thatcherism/Reaganomics, and it's just a shame the story ends there with all that has happened since.
The book is part biography and part social history, and places each of the thinkers and their theories (and counter-theories) in the context of their times, and shows how the body of knowledge was developed, and the arguments that have (and still do) rage.
All the expected 'great' thinkers are there (Smith, Mill, Marx, Keynes, etc) but the best chapters for me were on some of the lesser known characters, such as John Law ("The Richest Man Who Ever Lived") who was an exile in France (he was wanted for murder in England) who set up a bank that bankrolled the French Empire. He personally owned 2/3 of modern America and a large amount of Paris, as well as a dozen châteaus, and other estates, before the charlatan ways of his ascent tripped him on the way down and he ended his days in poverty.
Salutatory tales abound, on the excesses and triumphs of economics, and the perils of (literally) making money, but even after three readings I'm still little the wiser as to how or why money works, but then it transpires that neither were many of these great thinkers.
September 13, 2020
Paul Strathern describes the lives and thinking of some of the best known economic thinkers, from Adam Smith through David Ricardo to Alan Greenspan, and (somehow) manages to detail their major ideas in comprehensible and surprisingly funny ways.
The book begins with John von Neumann - the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's cold-war satire. von Neumann advised the US government on nuclear strategy in the 1950s, right up to the time he was so mentally ill that he had to be kept under watch in hospital by nurses with top-secret security clearance in case he gave away state secrets.
The portrayal of this character sets the scene for the book as a whole: von Neumann, and the subsequent thinkers described, are introduced as people with characters set in particular contexts - before their major ideas (game theory for von Neumann) are discussed. This balance of biography and economics is what renders the book so readable and engaging.
The choice of individuals to discuss helps as well: not only are the familiar faces of economics looked at - and often with an unusual focus on their lives and circumstances than textbooks would indulge - but far less well known characters than Adam Smith are given the spotlight too. Strathern revels in describing these less familiar often much more eccentric personalities. We hear about Henri de Saint-Simon - who toured the world, pitching bold, totally underdeveloped ideas: after failing to get the viceroy of Mexico to approve a canal through the country, he succeeded in getting the Spanish to agree to a similar scheme between Madrid and Seville. It wasn't until the government had earmarked 6,000 men for the task that they realised Saint-Simon's plan consisted of nothing more than the idea itself. He subsequently fled to revolutionary France where the the Comte was, naturally, imprisoned. This is not all for entertainment: Saint-Simon is given a fair hearing by Strathern who stresses the man's prescient view of scientific progress and praises his emphasis on the need to temper economics with a dose of humanity as well, something lacking from many of his contemporaries cold analysis.
Another amazing character I was totally unaware of is John Law - a Scotsman who was sentenced to death in England, escaped to France and ended up owning the first bank in France - the Banque Royale. Combined with essentially owning most of the French territories in the now-United States and a heap of French chateaux to boot he is reckoned to have been one of the wealthiest people of all time. We hear in great depth the life and impacts of this man and for this alone the book is well worth reading.
This book has its limitations, the most significant is the lack of a discernible thread holding it all together. While the author does make a few tenuous links back to John von Neumann (Dr. Strangelove) - the discussion of whom bookends the work - it is far from clear at times why particular individuals are being discussed and whether or not the aim is to frame the book by the maverick Hungarian.
At other times the author's distain for the more theoretical (read: less human-concerned) side of economics comes out and this may also be the book's ultimate point: that the story of economics has been too skewed to the side of the theories and models of homo economicus (as the subject's fictitious "rational" person is dubbed). To this must be added an accounting of homo sapiens - how people actually behave - alongside an ethics as well. But I may be adding this narrative gloss. In other words: I don't entirely know why this book was written or what its aim was, making it appear somewhat inchoate.
Yet this remains a wonderfully readable discussion of a cast of exciting people interspersed with a somewhat disjoined but admirably understandable history of economics. A definite read but one that could just as easily be dipped in and out of as read in one go.
The book begins with John von Neumann - the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's cold-war satire. von Neumann advised the US government on nuclear strategy in the 1950s, right up to the time he was so mentally ill that he had to be kept under watch in hospital by nurses with top-secret security clearance in case he gave away state secrets.
The portrayal of this character sets the scene for the book as a whole: von Neumann, and the subsequent thinkers described, are introduced as people with characters set in particular contexts - before their major ideas (game theory for von Neumann) are discussed. This balance of biography and economics is what renders the book so readable and engaging.
The choice of individuals to discuss helps as well: not only are the familiar faces of economics looked at - and often with an unusual focus on their lives and circumstances than textbooks would indulge - but far less well known characters than Adam Smith are given the spotlight too. Strathern revels in describing these less familiar often much more eccentric personalities. We hear about Henri de Saint-Simon - who toured the world, pitching bold, totally underdeveloped ideas: after failing to get the viceroy of Mexico to approve a canal through the country, he succeeded in getting the Spanish to agree to a similar scheme between Madrid and Seville. It wasn't until the government had earmarked 6,000 men for the task that they realised Saint-Simon's plan consisted of nothing more than the idea itself. He subsequently fled to revolutionary France where the the Comte was, naturally, imprisoned. This is not all for entertainment: Saint-Simon is given a fair hearing by Strathern who stresses the man's prescient view of scientific progress and praises his emphasis on the need to temper economics with a dose of humanity as well, something lacking from many of his contemporaries cold analysis.
Another amazing character I was totally unaware of is John Law - a Scotsman who was sentenced to death in England, escaped to France and ended up owning the first bank in France - the Banque Royale. Combined with essentially owning most of the French territories in the now-United States and a heap of French chateaux to boot he is reckoned to have been one of the wealthiest people of all time. We hear in great depth the life and impacts of this man and for this alone the book is well worth reading.
This book has its limitations, the most significant is the lack of a discernible thread holding it all together. While the author does make a few tenuous links back to John von Neumann (Dr. Strangelove) - the discussion of whom bookends the work - it is far from clear at times why particular individuals are being discussed and whether or not the aim is to frame the book by the maverick Hungarian.
At other times the author's distain for the more theoretical (read: less human-concerned) side of economics comes out and this may also be the book's ultimate point: that the story of economics has been too skewed to the side of the theories and models of homo economicus (as the subject's fictitious "rational" person is dubbed). To this must be added an accounting of homo sapiens - how people actually behave - alongside an ethics as well. But I may be adding this narrative gloss. In other words: I don't entirely know why this book was written or what its aim was, making it appear somewhat inchoate.
Yet this remains a wonderfully readable discussion of a cast of exciting people interspersed with a somewhat disjoined but admirably understandable history of economics. A definite read but one that could just as easily be dipped in and out of as read in one go.
April 24, 2020
Readable and comprehensive while still amusing and all-encompassing. I do wonder why there wasn't even one woman economist though.
September 19, 2008
This was a decent overview, but there was too much biography, and not enough math.
September 30, 2017
O livro tem muita informação sobre economia e sobre a biografia de vários economistas famosos, muito bem escrito e os conceitos econômicos estão diluídos entre muitas estórias engraçadas.
February 2, 2021
Publicado originalmente em 2002. Um relato rico e detalhado do desenvolvimento do pensamento econômico desde o século XV e dos principais matemáticos e economistas.
February 18, 2021
Cumpre o proposto.
December 25, 2021
Absolutely amazing. I refer to it all the time
May 31, 2013
Although somewhat different than what I was expecting, and from Strathern’s other books, this book was still quite informative. However, keep in mind Strathern’s subtitle, “A Brief History of Economic Genius“(my italics). What I am trying to say with this is that Strathern, unlike his other works, seeks to give account of the greatest minds devoted to the study of economy, as opposed to the subject of the history of economics itself. Understandably, Strathern then starts his history in the 17th century. Although economy per se didn’t really exist until even the following century after, this starting point still leaves the history reader wanting, and depending on your knowledge of feudalism with quite a knowledge gap to fill. Similarly, although Strathern does follow the lives of the major economics from the 17th century to the present, the focus on their lives and personal contributions ends up making a book that, uncharacteristically for Strathern, lacks an overall narrative in the progression of economics. I would still recommend this book, although not to those, whom like I, were looking for a history of economics analogous to the history of medicine that Starthern gave in another work.
May 14, 2015
An interesting overview of the development of economic thought over the last few centuries, told largely as a series of biographical vignettes of the various movers and shakers in the field. To be honest, I thought it spent a little too much time on the people (diverting though their deeds and eccentricities were) and not enough on the actual ideas of economics. The bibliography is also lacking, referring mostly to the biographies and the works of the greats, and largely avoiding overviews of the field.
Still, for what it is, it's worth a look.
Still, for what it is, it's worth a look.
November 18, 2009
An excellent and interesting book about a subject that is often found dry. Strathern gave us insight into the background (read families) of famous economists and described their personalities as well as their achievements.
October 5, 2015
Excelente livro! A evolução do pensamento econômico é contatada com um panorama da época em que a teoria foi desenvolvida, assim como a vida pessoal dos autores, que levou à aquele tipo de pensamento.
O livro é agradável e fácil de ler e compreender.
O livro é agradável e fácil de ler e compreender.
February 21, 2016
Enjoyed the pace and the factoids! The tenuous fabric of the created social reality we are all part of, took quite a lot of devising. Insightful and tied up quite a few loose ends, though far from iconoclastic in its scope.
July 4, 2013
forget the great history of economics. this is a philosophy book.
June 6, 2016
Livro interessante sobre a história da economia.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews