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The Wealth of Nations Books I-III
Originally delivered in the form of lectures at Glasgow, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations Books I-III laid the foundations of economic theory in general and 'classical' economics in particular, and this Penguin Classics edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Andrew Skinner.
The publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776 coincided with America's Declaration of Independence, and with this landmark treatise on political economy, Adam Smith paved the way for modern capitalism, arguing that a truly free market - fired by competition yet guided as if by an 'invisible hand' to ensure justice and equality - was the engine of a fair and productive society. Books I - III of The Wealth of Nations examine the 'division of labour' as the key to economic growth, by ensuring the interdependence of individuals within society. They also cover the origins of money and the importance of wages, profit, rent and stocks; but the real sophistication of his analysis derives from the fact that it encompasses a combination of ethics, philosophy and history to create a vast panorama of society.
This edition contains an analytical introduction offering an in-depth discussion of Smith as an economist and social scientist, as well as a preface, further reading and explanatory notes.
The publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776 coincided with America's Declaration of Independence, and with this landmark treatise on political economy, Adam Smith paved the way for modern capitalism, arguing that a truly free market - fired by competition yet guided as if by an 'invisible hand' to ensure justice and equality - was the engine of a fair and productive society. Books I - III of The Wealth of Nations examine the 'division of labour' as the key to economic growth, by ensuring the interdependence of individuals within society. They also cover the origins of money and the importance of wages, profit, rent and stocks; but the real sophistication of his analysis derives from the fact that it encompasses a combination of ethics, philosophy and history to create a vast panorama of society.
This edition contains an analytical introduction offering an in-depth discussion of Smith as an economist and social scientist, as well as a preface, further reading and explanatory notes.
570 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1999
107 people are currently reading
485 people want to read
About the author
Adam Smith
1,449 books2,289 followersFor other authors of this name, see Adam Smith.
Adam Smith FRSA FRS FRSE was a Scottish philosopher and economist who was a pioneer in thinking on political economy and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. He wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations , is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline.
Authorities recorded his baptism on 16 June 1723 at Kirkcaldy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
Adam Smith FRSA FRS FRSE was a Scottish philosopher and economist who was a pioneer in thinking on political economy and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. He wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations , is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline.
Authorities recorded his baptism on 16 June 1723 at Kirkcaldy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Smith
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 17, 2007
Three things happened in 1776.
1. The Revolutionary war started (Declaration of Independence).
2. Watt's first steam engine powered Wilkinson's
iron foundry blowers.
3. Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations".
1. The Revolutionary war started (Declaration of Independence).
2. Watt's first steam engine powered Wilkinson's
iron foundry blowers.
3. Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations".
January 13, 2021
Completely outdated reading. This book is only interesting from a historical perspective. Most of the economic concepts presented in this book are very elementary and generally well known to most people, such as supply and demand, the free market, the use of capital, etc. Adam Smith spends a lot of time analyzing archaic topics like the price of a bushel of corn relative to other commodities, and complains about governments borrowing amounts of money that are laughable when compared to what governments borrow today.
This book was written in the 1700's, so most of today's economic system wasn't even dreamed about yet. No stock markets, floating currencies, home mortgages, etc., etc. Manufacturing was relatively new, so a lot of this book is focused on agriculture, which is now a small part of most economies. And the writing is relatively preachy and tedious. This book just isn't worth the time it takes to read it.
This book was written in the 1700's, so most of today's economic system wasn't even dreamed about yet. No stock markets, floating currencies, home mortgages, etc., etc. Manufacturing was relatively new, so a lot of this book is focused on agriculture, which is now a small part of most economies. And the writing is relatively preachy and tedious. This book just isn't worth the time it takes to read it.
May 29, 2025
mostly dull. book three is literal whig history, and so is quite unuseful. but the author deserves great credit for his discovery of abstract labour in book one, even if he does not see its historicity
December 26, 2023
In our days of late capitalism, having had Adam Smith's "invisible hand" foisted upon us by so many right wing free market politicians, it's all too easy to dismiss The Wealth of Nations as more free-market dogma.
Don't do that. Secret #1: Many of the politicians who quote Smith have never actually read his work. The Wealth of Nations is not a brief work. (Books I-III clock in at 500 pages, though the introduction is nearly 100; Books IV-V are another 500 in a second volume.)
I am not going to lie, it's not the easiest thing you'll ever read (my eyes nearly crossed at a lengthy section on the value of grain in shillings per quarter for some length of time). However, Smith is generally a clear and at times witty writer, and (with the aid of modernized spelling and punctuation) quite readable.
He is, of course, not right about everything, but this was written by an eighteenth-century Scot, so it's creditable how much he does get right, and even when he doesn't, it's extremely useful to understand where classical economic ideas originated. Smith's market is not the magical political free market that always comes up with the right solution; his market simply says that he believes factors X, Y, and Z influence the market to come up with specific outcomes and why. It certainly isn't the right-wing fantasy of a capitalism that allows endless exploitation of workers (a thing Smith actually speaks against), and Smith's market has conditions that our own markets often fail to meet.
Don't do that. Secret #1: Many of the politicians who quote Smith have never actually read his work. The Wealth of Nations is not a brief work. (Books I-III clock in at 500 pages, though the introduction is nearly 100; Books IV-V are another 500 in a second volume.)
I am not going to lie, it's not the easiest thing you'll ever read (my eyes nearly crossed at a lengthy section on the value of grain in shillings per quarter for some length of time). However, Smith is generally a clear and at times witty writer, and (with the aid of modernized spelling and punctuation) quite readable.
He is, of course, not right about everything, but this was written by an eighteenth-century Scot, so it's creditable how much he does get right, and even when he doesn't, it's extremely useful to understand where classical economic ideas originated. Smith's market is not the magical political free market that always comes up with the right solution; his market simply says that he believes factors X, Y, and Z influence the market to come up with specific outcomes and why. It certainly isn't the right-wing fantasy of a capitalism that allows endless exploitation of workers (a thing Smith actually speaks against), and Smith's market has conditions that our own markets often fail to meet.
July 20, 2024
Whereas I was originally hesitant to engage with this text, even though Noam Chomsky, that inspired genius among the rabble, encouraged me to do so at age 19, less than a year prior to my traumatic brain-injury, I found that this book made progressively more sense to me the further I delved into it. In this respect I found The Wealth of Nations to be similar to Karl Marx's Capital, which in my view resembles the symbolic evolution of history as the mirror-stage of Adam Smith's economic treatise. After reading this book, all I can be sure of is that, personally, I come from a time where there was synonymy between scholarship and beggary, where people were surfeited with the profound wealth of Christ in their lives rather than the shallow riches bequeathed by an overabundant plenitude of exchange credits and, moreover, I am grounded in the times when society was regulated by the great chain of Being rather than a society whose social classes are shaped by the explosive catalepsies of production and consumption. Yes, I'm still here, posting directly on Goodreads most of the time. Mike Rothbaum, this one's for you!
June 16, 2020
una de las obras mas relevantes de la economia clasica, la piedra donde se basan varias ideologias economicas. smith explica varios conceptos basicos de como funcionan los mercados, como funciona el dinero y como este se mueve dentro de la economia.
June 7, 2014
Classic liberal economics at its finest
October 19, 2025
Adam Smith's Groundbreaking Mercantile Disquisition Effectively Sets 'The Price Of Monopoly' For Capitalist Economics.
Born in 1723, Adam Smith was a Scottish economist & philosopher who studied both at the University of Glasgow as well as Balliol College in Oxford. He was well-acclimated in many different subjects, among them Rhetoric, political philosophy, ethics & economics, but it is in the field of economics that Smith leaves to us his most profound legacy; more specifically, in Capitalism, where he is considered to be amongst its original progenitors. Throughout his life, the philosopher/economist rubbed shoulders with various, esteemed men of learning, all of whom left lasting legacies of their own. Most of them were French: Claude Adrien Helvétius, François Quesnay, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, & Voltaire. Along with Smith himself, all of these men lived during the great Age of Enlightenment which dominated the better part of two entire centuries of European philosophy.
Throughout Adam Smith's career he researched & composed two political & economic treatises which proved to be tremendously significant both in his own time & throughout history in the years following his death. The first, published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, explores man's motivation in precipitating benevolent actions that are construed to be morally virtuous, unselfish behavior. This edition includes an analytical introduction written by Andrew S. Skinner, who was an authority on Adam Smith throughout the course of his career. The introduction complements the main text fantastically & I learned a considerable degree about Smith's work & his life upon going through it. It's quite plain to see that there's a great deal of effort that goes into a historical work's introduction, & there's plenty of useful information in this one to reference when reading the main text.
Smith's second & most famous work is The Wealth of Nations. Its initial publication was in the year of our country's Declaration of Independence in 1776. The book served as the harbinger to what eventually became known as capitalism. Smith divided the material in 'Nations' into five separate books, all of varying length. The edition published by Penguin Classics is divided into two separate groupings of the five books, I-III & IV-V. I'm reviewing the first installment, books I-III. There are so many different topics covered within these pages it's difficult to decide what to discuss first.
I don't consider my knowledge in any given field to be at a professional level, not by any means. Most assuredly not in the field of economics, whether in capitalism or otherwise. Wealth of Nations was for me, the first book of its kind I had ever actually sat down & read from beginning to end so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Though for me a very difficult read I nonetheless found it an immensely enjoyable experience. Smith discusses so many disparate concepts & introduces such a staggering array of terms that it's more than enough to make the reader's head spin like a top in confusion at certain points in the text. Let me provide some examples. Before reading 'Wealth' I was familiar with terms appurtenant to the economy such as 'Capital', 'Wages', 'Rent', 'Profit', 'Interest' & 'Labour' only in the most basic, general way. I knew what they meant, & little more than that. I had never taken the time to actually sit down & contemplate their specific definitions. Like the word 'Interest'; anyone can grasp the concept of interest charges on your credit card bill, but when it's woven into series of ideas & defined as, 'Revenue derived from the use of money by the person who does not employ it himself, but lends it to another' it suddenly becomes a bit more approachable for me, particularly when presented in a historical context such as it is here.
The Wealth of Nations as I touched upon earlier was not an easy read for me. Many of the verbs & expressions Smith uses are decidedly Old English in origin & the dialect is from the eighteenth century, making the sentence structure extremely archaic & at times difficult to understand. Yet I still found this book thrilling to go through because I have always been fond of that region's history, & the language & expressions the people who live there use.
Overall, in my opinion The Wealth of Nations is composed in a style I felt to be detached & dispassionate, probably due to the nature of the treatise's content. Everything is written in a very cut-and-dry manner, matter-of-fact. Smith goes into great detail when comparing concepts such as 'Market Price' & 'Mint Price', or when he delineates on the 'Price of Monopoly'. He was very tactful in the manner he worded his sentences, in my own layman's estimation. What I was very impressed by is the fact that supporting the majority of Smith's arguments are a formidable array of examples from history, which are all annotated with notes at the bottom of the page. Midway through book III there is a three-page section on gardening where Smith cites the work of Democritus, when he advised against constructing an enclosure around a kitchen garden. Democritus believed the cost of the materials rendered the entire enterprise unprofitable. He also provides examples from Britain's history, such as in 1262 the 'Assize of Bread & Ale', where the price of bread was regulated relative to the price of wheat. There are so many different works he references there's no way I could possibly list them all. He does reference Pliny the Elder's 'Naturalis Historia' when discussing various exotic animals presented to the Roman empress Agrippina as gifts which I enjoyed reading, as I've read that particular title.
I doubt that The Wealth of Nations was written with the intention of achieving streamlined linguistic efficiency; quite the contrary. The arguments are relentlessly presented to the reader, utilizing as many words as Smith requires to get the job done. If I had to find two words to describe Adam Smith's composition style in this work, they would be 'brutally methodical'. Terms, phrases, or ideas relative to the subject being discussed are explained in blunt, delineatory fashion which to my eyes makes abundantly clear that the author wanted absolutely no room for interpretation of any kind as to their definitions. He often will explain a concept in the way that I would think only an academic professional would be capable of doing the way it's done in 'Wealth of Nations'. Yet at the same time Smith also possesses a finesse to his language which makes the otherwise dry area of focus in a 500-page economic treatise flow a bit smoother.
Adam Smith strongly believed in the way his era's society was structured as being comprised of three major groups, each earning their livelihood in a different way : rent, wages or profits. He believed all forms of revenue were irrevocably related with these three classifications. Much of 'The Wealth of Nations' entire text is founded on those three guiding principles & the reader will be intimately familiar with them by the time he or she has finished it. Book I is mainly concerned with the different forms of labor, Book II discusses stock, capital, & banking, & Book III explains opulence & also is a brief history lesson on how civilization progressed following the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Overall, I'd highly recommend Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations: Books I-III to anyone interested in economics, capitalism, history, or the 'Age of Enlightenment'. The technical nature of the wording used can be a challenge but I'd not say that to ward anyone off, I'm most assuredly not a scholarly authority on historical literature, just a reader who enjoys experiencing different periods in our world's past. Were I to suggest a couple of books to maybe enhance your experience if & when you try 'The Wealth of Nations', I'd first recommend 'Naturalis Historia' by Pliny the Elder as well as 'Cicero : Selected Works' to provide some background for the Roman history Smith incorporates into his exposition.
Born in 1723, Adam Smith was a Scottish economist & philosopher who studied both at the University of Glasgow as well as Balliol College in Oxford. He was well-acclimated in many different subjects, among them Rhetoric, political philosophy, ethics & economics, but it is in the field of economics that Smith leaves to us his most profound legacy; more specifically, in Capitalism, where he is considered to be amongst its original progenitors. Throughout his life, the philosopher/economist rubbed shoulders with various, esteemed men of learning, all of whom left lasting legacies of their own. Most of them were French: Claude Adrien Helvétius, François Quesnay, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, & Voltaire. Along with Smith himself, all of these men lived during the great Age of Enlightenment which dominated the better part of two entire centuries of European philosophy.
Throughout Adam Smith's career he researched & composed two political & economic treatises which proved to be tremendously significant both in his own time & throughout history in the years following his death. The first, published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, explores man's motivation in precipitating benevolent actions that are construed to be morally virtuous, unselfish behavior. This edition includes an analytical introduction written by Andrew S. Skinner, who was an authority on Adam Smith throughout the course of his career. The introduction complements the main text fantastically & I learned a considerable degree about Smith's work & his life upon going through it. It's quite plain to see that there's a great deal of effort that goes into a historical work's introduction, & there's plenty of useful information in this one to reference when reading the main text.
Smith's second & most famous work is The Wealth of Nations. Its initial publication was in the year of our country's Declaration of Independence in 1776. The book served as the harbinger to what eventually became known as capitalism. Smith divided the material in 'Nations' into five separate books, all of varying length. The edition published by Penguin Classics is divided into two separate groupings of the five books, I-III & IV-V. I'm reviewing the first installment, books I-III. There are so many different topics covered within these pages it's difficult to decide what to discuss first.
I don't consider my knowledge in any given field to be at a professional level, not by any means. Most assuredly not in the field of economics, whether in capitalism or otherwise. Wealth of Nations was for me, the first book of its kind I had ever actually sat down & read from beginning to end so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Though for me a very difficult read I nonetheless found it an immensely enjoyable experience. Smith discusses so many disparate concepts & introduces such a staggering array of terms that it's more than enough to make the reader's head spin like a top in confusion at certain points in the text. Let me provide some examples. Before reading 'Wealth' I was familiar with terms appurtenant to the economy such as 'Capital', 'Wages', 'Rent', 'Profit', 'Interest' & 'Labour' only in the most basic, general way. I knew what they meant, & little more than that. I had never taken the time to actually sit down & contemplate their specific definitions. Like the word 'Interest'; anyone can grasp the concept of interest charges on your credit card bill, but when it's woven into series of ideas & defined as, 'Revenue derived from the use of money by the person who does not employ it himself, but lends it to another' it suddenly becomes a bit more approachable for me, particularly when presented in a historical context such as it is here.
The Wealth of Nations as I touched upon earlier was not an easy read for me. Many of the verbs & expressions Smith uses are decidedly Old English in origin & the dialect is from the eighteenth century, making the sentence structure extremely archaic & at times difficult to understand. Yet I still found this book thrilling to go through because I have always been fond of that region's history, & the language & expressions the people who live there use.
Overall, in my opinion The Wealth of Nations is composed in a style I felt to be detached & dispassionate, probably due to the nature of the treatise's content. Everything is written in a very cut-and-dry manner, matter-of-fact. Smith goes into great detail when comparing concepts such as 'Market Price' & 'Mint Price', or when he delineates on the 'Price of Monopoly'. He was very tactful in the manner he worded his sentences, in my own layman's estimation. What I was very impressed by is the fact that supporting the majority of Smith's arguments are a formidable array of examples from history, which are all annotated with notes at the bottom of the page. Midway through book III there is a three-page section on gardening where Smith cites the work of Democritus, when he advised against constructing an enclosure around a kitchen garden. Democritus believed the cost of the materials rendered the entire enterprise unprofitable. He also provides examples from Britain's history, such as in 1262 the 'Assize of Bread & Ale', where the price of bread was regulated relative to the price of wheat. There are so many different works he references there's no way I could possibly list them all. He does reference Pliny the Elder's 'Naturalis Historia' when discussing various exotic animals presented to the Roman empress Agrippina as gifts which I enjoyed reading, as I've read that particular title.
I doubt that The Wealth of Nations was written with the intention of achieving streamlined linguistic efficiency; quite the contrary. The arguments are relentlessly presented to the reader, utilizing as many words as Smith requires to get the job done. If I had to find two words to describe Adam Smith's composition style in this work, they would be 'brutally methodical'. Terms, phrases, or ideas relative to the subject being discussed are explained in blunt, delineatory fashion which to my eyes makes abundantly clear that the author wanted absolutely no room for interpretation of any kind as to their definitions. He often will explain a concept in the way that I would think only an academic professional would be capable of doing the way it's done in 'Wealth of Nations'. Yet at the same time Smith also possesses a finesse to his language which makes the otherwise dry area of focus in a 500-page economic treatise flow a bit smoother.
Adam Smith strongly believed in the way his era's society was structured as being comprised of three major groups, each earning their livelihood in a different way : rent, wages or profits. He believed all forms of revenue were irrevocably related with these three classifications. Much of 'The Wealth of Nations' entire text is founded on those three guiding principles & the reader will be intimately familiar with them by the time he or she has finished it. Book I is mainly concerned with the different forms of labor, Book II discusses stock, capital, & banking, & Book III explains opulence & also is a brief history lesson on how civilization progressed following the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Overall, I'd highly recommend Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations: Books I-III to anyone interested in economics, capitalism, history, or the 'Age of Enlightenment'. The technical nature of the wording used can be a challenge but I'd not say that to ward anyone off, I'm most assuredly not a scholarly authority on historical literature, just a reader who enjoys experiencing different periods in our world's past. Were I to suggest a couple of books to maybe enhance your experience if & when you try 'The Wealth of Nations', I'd first recommend 'Naturalis Historia' by Pliny the Elder as well as 'Cicero : Selected Works' to provide some background for the Roman history Smith incorporates into his exposition.
September 28, 2025
Dari ide sederhana tentang manusia yang gemar bertukar barang, lahirlah pemikiran besar yang menjelaskan bagaimana pasar, perdagangan, dan pembagian kerja bisa mendorong kemakmuran suatu bangsa. Buku ini memperlihatkan bagaimana spesialisasi pekerjaan membuat orang semakin terampil, produktif, dan akhirnya mampu menghasilkan lebih banyak untuk dirinya dan masyarakat. Selain itu, ada bahasan menarik tentang bagaimana uang, modal, dan investasi memengaruhi pertumbuhan ekonomi serta bagaimana kemakmuran berkembang berbeda di negara agraris dan negara industri. Meskipun ditulis di abad ke-18, pandangan-pandangan di dalamnya masih terasa relevan saat ini, terutama saat kita membicarakan soal peran pemerintah, pasar bebas, hingga keadilan sosial. Membaca karya ini serasa menyusuri akar dari ekonomi modern yang masih memengaruhi cara kita memahami dunia hari ini. Teks yang penuh pemikiran filosofis sekaligus praktis ini bukan hanya untuk akademisi, tetapi juga untuk siapa saja yang penasaran dari mana ide tentang “tangan tak terlihat” dan dinamika pasar bermula. Sangat cocok bagi mahasiswa, dosen, pebisnis, pengambil kebijakan, atau pembaca umum yang ingin mengenal fondasi pemikiran ekonomi klasik dengan cara yang menggugah. https://blog.periplus.com/2025/09/22/...
November 21, 2023
Adam Smith's magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, remains an enduring cornerstone of economic thought and a foundational text in the development of modern economics. In this seminal work, Smith expounds on the principles of capitalism, free markets, and the division of labor, delineating how the pursuit of self-interest in a free-market system can lead to the collective wealth and prosperity of a nation.
Central to Smith's argument is the concept of the invisible hand, wherein individuals, motivated by their self-interest in pursuing profit, inadvertently contribute to the overall economic well-being of society. He advocates for free trade, minimal government intervention in economic affairs, and the importance of competition in driving economic growth and efficiency.
Some common misconceptions surrounding Smith's work include the oversimplification of his ideas into a laissez-faire ideology devoid of any government intervention. While Smith advocated for limited government interference in economic matters, he acknowledged the necessity of certain regulations, such as protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and preventing monopolies, to ensure the proper functioning of markets.
The Wealth of Nations has had an immense influence on shaping the world today. Its ideas laid the groundwork for classical economics and have significantly impacted economic policy-making and the development of capitalist economies. Smith's emphasis on the division of labor, the benefits of specialisation, and the importance of free trade has permeated economic theory and policy, influencing the evolution of global markets and trade practices.
Furthermore, Smith's ideas have spurred debates on economic philosophy, the role of governments in economic affairs, and the balance between individual freedom and societal well-being. Despite criticisms and evolving economic theories, Smith's legacy endures, as his work continues to inform economic discourse and policy decisions, leaving an indelible mark on the world's economic systems.
Central to Smith's argument is the concept of the invisible hand, wherein individuals, motivated by their self-interest in pursuing profit, inadvertently contribute to the overall economic well-being of society. He advocates for free trade, minimal government intervention in economic affairs, and the importance of competition in driving economic growth and efficiency.
Some common misconceptions surrounding Smith's work include the oversimplification of his ideas into a laissez-faire ideology devoid of any government intervention. While Smith advocated for limited government interference in economic matters, he acknowledged the necessity of certain regulations, such as protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and preventing monopolies, to ensure the proper functioning of markets.
The Wealth of Nations has had an immense influence on shaping the world today. Its ideas laid the groundwork for classical economics and have significantly impacted economic policy-making and the development of capitalist economies. Smith's emphasis on the division of labor, the benefits of specialisation, and the importance of free trade has permeated economic theory and policy, influencing the evolution of global markets and trade practices.
Furthermore, Smith's ideas have spurred debates on economic philosophy, the role of governments in economic affairs, and the balance between individual freedom and societal well-being. Despite criticisms and evolving economic theories, Smith's legacy endures, as his work continues to inform economic discourse and policy decisions, leaving an indelible mark on the world's economic systems.
April 9, 2025
After almost 250 years, this is still the most seminal work in all of Economics.
I have been studying Economics for more than 8 years. While this by no means makes me an expert, at least it makes me somewhat knowledgeable in the subject.
Throughout this time I have read many works by many authors in the field (even some excerpts from this book), but had never read The Wealth of Nations in its entirety. The amount of theory and knowledge contained in this book (I have not yet read books 4 and 5) is so amazing that almost no other book is needed to understand macroeconomics (and some of micro as well).
Adam Smith was someone with a clear view of human nature, history and industry. He makes connections that are clear and surprising, leaving me repeatedly awestruck.
Although it is somewhat tedious at times, reading this book is not only enjoyable, but necessary for the understanding economics. Do not listen to his critics, they tend to not understand his work properly. Read this book.
I have been studying Economics for more than 8 years. While this by no means makes me an expert, at least it makes me somewhat knowledgeable in the subject.
Throughout this time I have read many works by many authors in the field (even some excerpts from this book), but had never read The Wealth of Nations in its entirety. The amount of theory and knowledge contained in this book (I have not yet read books 4 and 5) is so amazing that almost no other book is needed to understand macroeconomics (and some of micro as well).
Adam Smith was someone with a clear view of human nature, history and industry. He makes connections that are clear and surprising, leaving me repeatedly awestruck.
Although it is somewhat tedious at times, reading this book is not only enjoyable, but necessary for the understanding economics. Do not listen to his critics, they tend to not understand his work properly. Read this book.
June 18, 2019
A difficult read with long examples. If you’ve taken economic courses before this is nothing new and hearing it from the horse’s mouth felt like more of a formality. For someone who doesn’t know anything about modern economic theory, this will either be enlightening or too difficult to work through.
January 2, 2019
A Classic on Economics
A straightforward work regarding economics and the types and use of capital in fostering growth and commerce to grow the wealth of a nation that is grounded in common sense and historical empirical analysis.
A straightforward work regarding economics and the types and use of capital in fostering growth and commerce to grow the wealth of a nation that is grounded in common sense and historical empirical analysis.
August 10, 2021
Smith's justifications laid almost every aspect for the foundation of modern capitalism - division of labour, self-interest, etc. however his justifications on the value of land (and also labour) requires further probing in which Marx's writings could offer a counter argument.
October 12, 2020
Like you, I put this book on here to pad things out.. Of course I’d never read anything past the intro, which I duly pasted into a political science essay.
January 2, 2021
Amazing how the master foresaw many of the issues that we discuss today... it is a shame that schools don't devote nearly enough time to study his work.
June 4, 2022
Good overview of for the foundation of the modern capitalist society from an original source.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews