A thoroughly delightful look at some major economists by a great maverick among 20th century economists, Schumpter. The ten featured are Marx (yeech), Walras (okay), Menger (great!), Marshall (important), Boehm-Bawerk (great), Pareto (endlessly fascinating), Taussig (unduly neglected), Fisher (ish), Mitchell (now for something completely different), and the never-dead politician, Keynes. I'm not exactly in agreement with Schumpter about these economists, but hey: he was a fine writer and an important mind. I can bear with his analyses of Marx and Keynes . . . but I notice something.

Professionals and academics and pundits often talk about how "free market" economists are "so polemical" and "so political" and not Wertfrei enough, but the two title economists are BEST known for their politics while it is the more liberal, free-market types (Walras, Menger, Boehm-Bawerk, Taussig, et al.) who really kept their policy proposals and the like in careful check. Both Marx and Keynes were PRIMARILY politicians, that is, revolutionary and reformist respectively.

This edition contains an appendix with short bios/obits for three more economists, one of them being the great and obscure Austrian puzzler, Friedrich von Wieser. ( )