Grand Pursuit: A History of Economic Genius

Oh My God, this is a long book that is not easy to read.
I mostly read non-fiction and I enjoy political and historical books with boring numbers, dates and statistics, but this is something else.
I’m not really familiar with the history of economics. I know a bit about economics, enough to get me through the publicly available details of the 2008 crisis. However, this is about history as much as it is about economics. It’s how all these principles came to be. It’s the countries, houses, families, personal stories, wars, upbringings and biases that made these theories what they are.
The book’s language is not easy, it’s formal, a bit old (at least for my taste). The book moves between personal stories, public stories, and economic principles. This makes harder to get a grasp on what’s going on exactly.
History is complicated, and what the book does well is moving you into whatever period it’s discussing and really getting a feel of how things were. It’s a nice straight forward story of events. It’s not focused on one person, one country, or any one focus point. All the stories are connected, where every character builds on the work of the character before it.
What the book does well is give a very good idea for why economics is important and how it really impacts our lives.
I’ve finished the book over about 18 months because I left it for a long while. I’d like to read it again now that I know all the characters. Second time would provide a better understanding, but it’s not easy to read.

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