Mark Blaug (1927–2011)

First, the good: Blaug goes over an incredible amount of economic theory, very expertly summarizing the key thoughts and ideas of most major economists. His prose is not easy to read, but after understanding it, it's hard to see how he could have more easily gotten the information across. His readers guides to the major works of economics are excellent.

Now, the bad: Blaug assumes that his reader understands economics from a modern perspective. As such, he sometimes explains certain ideas of show more early economists by discussing the more modern ideas that they led to. This gets worse when he discusses more recent economists like Marshall or Keynes. Also, the fifth edition is fairly poorly edited, with errors in both the text and the equations--if something doesn't make sense, there's a chance it's wrong.

I would recommend this book. It's probably the closest you can get to actually reading the source texts themselves, and Blaug's analysis is worth reading. show less

Romanian edition, Bucharest 1992