The Ordinary Business of Life: A History of Economics from the Ancient World to the Twenty-First Century

by Roger E. Backhouse

In some of Western culture's earliest writings, Hesiod defined the basic economic problem as one of scarce resources, a view still held by most economists. Diocletian tried to save the falling Roman Empire with wage and price fixes--a strategy that has not gone entirely out of style. And just as they did in the late nineteenth century, thinkers trained in physics renovated economic inquiry in the late twentieth century. Taking us from Homer to the frontiers of game theory, this book presents an engrossing history of economics, what Alfred Marshall called "the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life."


While some regard economics as a modern invention, Roger Backhouse shows that economic ideas were influential even in antiquity--and that the origins of contemporary economic thought can be traced back to the ancients. He reveals the genesis of what we have come to think of as economic theory and shows the remarkable but seldom explored impact of economics, natural science, and philosophy on one another. Along the way, he introduces the fascinating characters who have thought about money and markets, including theologians, philosophers, politicians, lawyers, and poets as well as economists themselves. We learn how some of history's most influential concepts arose from specific times and from the Stoic notion of natural law to the mercantilism that rose with the European nation-state; from postwar development economics to the recent experimental and statistical economics made possible by affluence and powerful computers.


Vividly written and unprecedented in its integration of ancient and modern economic history, this book is the best history of economics--and among the finest intellectual histories--to be published since Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers . It proves that economics has been anything but "the dismal science."

Genres: Economics, History, Politics, Nonfiction

248 pages, Hardcover

First published February 11, 2002

Reviews

[Roger Smitter · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first words in this book is: "This book is about the history of attempts to understand economic phenomena." That's a lot of words and ideas.

But it's a book that you can get through. And you get some things you have never thought out.
For example, on page 3 we are given "....economic ideas are an integral: component of culture."
Can econimic and culture be a book? Yes, it can.

The first chapter is "The Ancient World? And Chapter 2 is "The Middle Ages." It's a good start to get us to see why we had the "Modern World View -- the Sixteenth Century." And we see that the word "church" cane out to the people (and the place called 'Roman Catholic." This book doesn't doesn't talk aboutt Jesus.

This book gives a little about what we have been thinking and talking about these times in the old times. The Ordinary Business of Life gives us a way to understand what happened in the world is look at for a long (really long) time.

[Wilbur Townsend]

Does a good job tracing the history of ideas, e.g. showing that the contributions of Smith and Keynes were relatively marginal given what came before them. I thought the opening chapters on the ancient world were uncompelling --- in fact, I was struck by how little economics the author could find in ancient and biblical thinking (in contrast to the amount of political thought more generally). Despite its title, there isn't much coverage of economics from the 1980s onward (which is understandable, given it was published in 2002, but economics has changed a lot in the last 40 years).

[Dave Schroeder · Rating 5 out of 5]

You'll learn stuff.

[Roger Smitter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger E. Backhouse takes a long (and powerful ) time to learn about what happened a time ago. Yes, a LOT of TIME.

The Ordinary Business of Life gives a very good time to thinking about history and how business becoming off in a book. One of the early statements is “This book is about the history of attempts to understand economic phenomena. (P. 1)

Chapter 1 gives us Homer and Plato. In Chapter 2 there’s a connection of Judaism and then to the “Emergence of the New Testament. And then there’s the “Emergence of the Modern World View.” That was the 16th time in our world. When we are reading on the early pieces, we see that history can look and talk about it in ways that we don’t know. History gives us what happened in many different ways.

There are some stories about what happened in the world. The early chapters show how things had changed in history. And lots of things come up in the middle part of the world. Some of that was about wars and Christianity.

Then the big one that is still going hard now: Science, Politics, and Economy.

The last third of the book shows how changes that happened in the 1850’s (sort of); money and business changed very differently. Chapter 12 is Quantitative Economics” and Chapter 13 is Mathematical Economics.

And there are parts like: “The Middle Ages” and “The Emergence of the Modern World.” Obviously, the writer gives a very different way to think and learn about history. The first three chapters bring an out some-of-the-history so we can think about what we have in the things now.

[Ushan · Rating 2 out of 5]

A concise history of economics from the ancient Greeks till the present day. Aristotle thought that the just price is the harmonic mean of the maximum the buyer is willing to pay and the minimum the seller is willing to accept; other kinds of justice involved the arithmetic mean and the geometric mean. The arithmetic-geometric mean had not yet been invented in Aristotle's days.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable book. Almost in an The Atlantic type style wherein the transition from economics as philosophical art to its translation into a science under the domain of a statistical programme, is well done.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be long at times and tedious at others. Yet, as books of this genre go, I found this read compelling. If you enjoy history and especially history of how we progressed from ancient times to today, you should consider this book.

[A · Rating 1 out of 5]

I remember this book as being one of the most plodding and boring works which I have ever read. And I am one who greatly enjoys history.