50 Economics Classics
The greatest economics books distilled
by Tom Butler-Bowdon

Silver Medal Winner, 2018 U.S. Axiom Business Book Awards!
(Business Reference Category)

Economics drives the modern world and shapes our lives, but few of us feel we have time to engage with the breadth of ideas in the subject. 50 Economics Classics is the smart person's guide to two centuries of discussion of finance, capitalism and the global economy. From Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations to Thomas Piketty's bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, here are the great reads, seminal ideas and famous texts clarified and illuminated for all.

Table of Contents 
 
Introduction 

1. Liaquat Ahamed - Lords of Finance (2009) 
Fixed ideas in economics can have disastrous results
 
2. William Baumol - The Microtheory of Innovative Entrepreneurship (2010)       
Entrepreneurs are the engines of growth and must be valued
                   
3. Gary Becker - Human Capital (1964)     
The most important investment we ever make is in ourselves
 
4. John Bogle - The Little Book of Common Sense Investing (2007)       
The most successful investing strategy is also the easiest
 
5. Eric Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee - The Second Machine Age (2014)
Technological revolutions must allow for the advance of everyone
 
6. Ha-Joon Chang - 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (2012)
Many nations succeeded by bucking the rules of orthodox economics
 
7. Diane Coyle - GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History (2014)
How we measure economic output has consequences for people and nations
 
8. Ronald Coase - The Firm, The Market and The Law (1990)
Why firms exist; the role of transaction costs in economic life
 
9. Peter Drucker - Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985)
Success comes from taking management and ideas seriously
 
10. Niall Ferguson - The Ascent of Money (2008)
Finance is not evil, it built the modern world
 
11. Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Free markets, not government, protect the individual and ensure quality
 
12.  JK Galbraith - The Great Crash, 1929 (1954)
It’s government’s job to stop speculative frenzies ruining the real economy
 
13.  Henry George - Progress and Poverty (1879)
The best and fairest way to ensure opportunity is a tax on land
 
14.  Robert J Gordon - The Rise and Fall of American Growth (2016)
Living standards keep rising, but the greatest gains have already happened
 
15.  Benjamin Graham - The Intelligent Investor (1949)
We grow in wealth through long-term investing, not speculating
 
16.  Friedrich Hayek - The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945)
Societies prosper when they give up planning and control, and allow decentralization of knowledge
 
17.  Albert O Hirschman - Exit, Voice and Loyalty (1970)
Consumers have many options to get what they want
 
18.  Jane Jacobs - The Economy of Cities (1968)
Cities have always been, and always will be, the drivers of wealth
 
19.  John Maynard Keynes - The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
To achieve social goals like full employment, governments must actively manage the economy
 
20.  Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine (2008)
‘Neoliberal’ economic programs have proved a disaster for many developing countries
 
21.  Paul Krugman - The Conscience of a Liberal (2007)
The postwar consensus on how to grow an economy has been hijacked by ideology
 
22.  Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner - Freakonomics (2006)
Economics is not a moral science, more an observation of how incentives work
 
23. Michael Lewis - The Big Short (2011)
Modern finance was meant to minimize risk, but it has only increased dangers
 
24.  Deirdre McCloskey - Bourgeois Equality (2016)
The world became wealthy thanks to an idea: entrepreneurs and merchants are not so bad after all
 
25.  Thomas Malthus - An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)
The world’s finite resources can’t cope with an increasing population
 
26.  Alfred Marshall - Principles of Economics (1890)
To understand people, watch their habits of earning, saving and investing
 
27.  Karl Marx - Capital (1867)
The interests of labor and capital are perennially in conflict
 
28.  Hyman Minsky - Stabilizing An Unstable Economy (1986)
Rather than creating equilibrium, capitalism is inherently unstable
 
29.  Ludwig Von Mises - Human Action (1940)
Economics has laws which no person, society or government can escape
 
30.  Dambisa Moyo - Dead Aid (2010)
Countries grow and get rich by creating industries, not by addiction to aid
 
31. Elinor Ostrom - Governing the Commons (1990)
To stay healthy, common resources like air, water and forests need to be managed in novel ways.
 
32. Thomas Piketty - Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014)
The scales of wealth are tipping towards capital; if inequality widens there will be social upheaval
 
33. Karl Polanyi - The Great Transformation (1944)
​Markets must serve society, not the other way around
 
34. Michael E Porter - The Competitive Advantage of Nations (1990)
Competition and industry clusters make a rich nation
 
35.  Ayn Rand - Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
Capitalism is the most moral form of political economy
 
36.  David Ricardo - Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817)
A free-trading world will see each nation fulfil its potential
 
37.  Dani Rodrik - The Globalization Paradox (2011)
Globalization agendas are often floored by national politics
 
38.  Paul Samuelson - Economics (1948)
A combination of classical and Keynesian ideas creates the best-performing economies
 
39.  EF Schumacher - Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973)
A new economics must arise which takes more account of people than output
 
40.  Joseph Schumpeter - Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942)
No form of political economy matches the dynamism of capitalism and its process of ‘creative destruction’
 
41. Thomas Schelling - Micromotives and Macrobehavior (1978)
Small behaviors and choices of individuals ultimately produce ‘tipping points’ with major effects
 
42. Amartya Sen - Poverty and Famines (1981)
People starve not because there isn’t enough food, but because economics circumstances suddenly change
 
43.  Robert Shiller - Irrational Exuberance (2000)
Psychology, not fundamental values, drives markets
 
44.  Julian Simon - The Ultimate Resource 2 (1997)
The world will never run out of resources, because it is the human mind that drives advance, not capital or materials
 
45.  Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations (1778)
The wealth of a nation is that of its people, not its government
 
46.  Hernando de Soto - The Mystery of Capital (2003)
Clear property rights are the basis of stability and prosperity
 
47.  Joseph Stiglitz - The Euro (2016)
Europe’s failed currency and its ideological underpinnings
 
48.  Richard Thaler - Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics (2015)
How psychology has transformed the economics discipline
 
49.  Thorstein Veblen - Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
The great goal of capitalist life is not to have to work - or to take on the appearance of not needing to
 
50.  Max Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904)
Culture and religion are the most overlooked ingredients of economic success
 
50 More Classics
 
Chronological List
 
Acknowledgements
 
Credits

​50 ECONOMICS CLASSICS
Your shortcut to the most important ideas on capitalism, finance, and the global economy

Nicholas Brealey Publishing

Publication: 
UK May 4, 2017 
US May 30, 2017
Paperback original · $19.95/£12.99     
ISBN: 1857886739
Paperback and Kindle    

"A fascinating and very timely book."

Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of Political Economy, John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

"The synopses in this book are fair, balanced, and about as good an introduction to the broad range of modern economic writing, along with a few classics, as one is likely to find."

Professor James K Galbraith, University of Texas, author of Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know

“This book looks into some huge pieces of economic thought which even many important economists have browsed too swiftly or learned about in secondary sources. Tom’s approach is more thorough, more systematic, more unbiased, more honest than that of many so-called experts, providing a critical asset that most economists lack, one that specialization has driven the academia to neglect: intelligent synthesis.

This is not just a book for people who want to save time by reading one book instead of 50, because it also offers valuable interpretation and contextualization of each approach from what is an informed and profound perspective. If you are not an economist, this book will teach you a lot. And if you are an economist, it will also teach you a lot.”
 
Hernan Blejer, economic journalist, consultant and lecturer, Euromonitor, University of Buenos Aires, London School of Economics
50 Economics Classics Reviewed:

“Tom Butler-Bowdon’s extremely useful 50 Economics Classics summarises the best of the must-reads, leaving you, after a mere 350 pages, much more in control of your budding economic prowess. This might make it sound like a self-help book that somehow makes things easier for dummies, or presents you with the tools to bluff your way along. But it’s not. In presentation, it has the hallmarks of a comprehensive reading list, usefully cross-referenced and with succinct abstracts that get you to the heart of the matter, without having to plough through too much soft tissue.
​
To round up the best of the best is a manifestly good idea, and to have these works presented in a consistently detailed and accurate way makes ‘50 Economics Classics’ something of a modern classic in its own right.”

Nick Smith, E&T (Engineering & Technology)

“Picking up '50 Economics Classics' for the first time it would be easy to dismiss it as a 'bluffer's guide', summarising the works of famous economists in six-page chunks and reducing the impact of their often radical and transformative ideas. However, what author Tom Butler-Bowdon does well is to frame these ideas both in the context of the time they were written and from a modern perspective. Economics giants such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Milton Friedman feature heavily, but one of the book's big plus points for me is that it has room for more contemporary authors and ideas…the book is a well-written affair by an author obviously in full control of his subject.”

Tom Herbert, Accounting Web

"An incisive, concise, and distilled look at the world of economics that spans 200 years. Major theories and writers are put under scrutiny and critique - Marx, Krugman, Thaler and Keynes to name but a few. Areas and subjects covered include economic freedom, food security, knowledge, globalisation, neoliberalism and 'creative destruction.' This embracing publication is not only a wonderful introduction, but a useful reminder of the subject for seasoned learners."

Len Parkyn, The Teacher (National Union of Teachers UK)

"A good starting point for someone new to economics wanting a general overview. Capturing the essence of a book in 3 pages is a difficult task. Tom Butler-Bowdon is a very well-read person with this rare skill."

Diane Coyle, author of GDP: A brief but affectionate history 

"I've read 50 Economics Classics cover to cover. It's a great achievement and I wish I'd had it when doing A level economics."

Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle