Podcast: Freakonomics Radio
Episode: In Search of the Real Adam Smith | Freakonomics Radio | Episode 525
Here’s a list of all the books mentioned in this episode, complete with an Amazon buy link and quotes from the episode.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Buy on Amazon"The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations; those were the books Adam Smith left behind."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations; those were the books Adam Smith left behind."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"If you know anything at all about Adam Smith, it probably comes from his second and most famous book, The Wealth of Nations."
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Buy on Amazon"Maybe you have read some of Smith's first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, but probably not."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"In that same year, a Scottish economist named Adam Smith launched another revolution with a book entitled The Wealth of Nations, which exposed for all time the folly of protectionism."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"And then, of course, with The Wealth of Nations, how do you understand the forces of national wealth?"
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Buy on Amazon"And these are the questions that animate Smith's first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"Obviously, some biographers suggest that he was certainly looking at things in the early part of The Wealth of Nations; he talks about pin manufacture, and obviously in Kirkcaldy, that was in the next village to here."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"If you have read even a little bit of The Wealth of Nations, you may recall the passage that George Proudfoot is talking about here—the pin factory."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"Here is how Smith put it in The Wealth of Nations: 'If they had all worked separately and independently and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made 20; perhaps not one pin in a day.'"
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"Adam Smith changed that; here is a famous passage from the first of five books that make up The Wealth of Nations: 'It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner but from their regard to their own interest.'"
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"It also says on the site stood the home of his mother, in which he lived from 1767 to 1776, and completed The Wealth of Nations."
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Buy on Amazon"It doesn't say The Theory of Moral Sentiments, but The Theory of Moral Sentiments tells you so much more about Smith than what The Wealth of Nations does."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"It doesn't say The Theory of Moral Sentiments, but The Theory of Moral Sentiments tells you so much more about Smith than what The Wealth of Nations does."
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Buy on Amazon"I think my understanding of Smith has moved on; that would have been the book which people would have recognized, but for Smith, of course, there's no question about it, The Theory of Moral Sentiments is an extremely important book."
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Buy on Amazon"You see the humanity and understanding of people from The Theory of Moral Sentiments even more so than from The Wealth of Nations."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"You see the humanity and understanding of people from The Theory of Moral Sentiments even more so than from The Wealth of Nations."
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Buy on Amazon"Coming up, we hear from one Smith scholar who agrees that The Theory of Moral Sentiments is the more interesting, richer, and in many ways, the more innovative of the two books."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"Years later in The Wealth of Nations, he would blame the incentives, explaining that professors were paid well whether they taught well or not at the University of Oxford."
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Buy on Amazon"There were just the two books: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, with multiple editions of each since he was an inveterate reviser."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"There were just the two books: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, with multiple editions of each since he was an inveterate reviser."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"Smith later very famously said that this letter brought on me ten times more abuse than the very violent attack I made on the entire commercial system of Great Britain, meaning of course The Wealth of Nations."
The Wealth of Nations
Buy on Amazon"The Wealth of Nations is an attack on the entire commercial system of Great Britain."