I'll admit I gave up on this one. The first hundred pages or so of clear history and development of economics through ancient times, the medieval era and the enlightenment hit a brick wall halfway through, giving way to dense discussions of money supply and labour value. I couldn't cope with it anymore, which is disappointing because I stopped before the modern Keynesian theory and all that follows. I'll ask an economist friend about that stuff... ( )

Unfortunately I didn't pay enough attention to the scope of this book before I started to read it. Within the first three sentences the author makes it clear that this book is about the history of economic thought and ideas, rather than economic phenomena themselves. Perhaps the book should have been entitled 'History of Economic Thought' then. It is clearly a good introduction to that, however since I was hoping for more understanding of economics itself I found myself occasionally without sufficient knowledge of the topics. It can also be rather dry, with one economic 'thinker' following another relentlessly. ( )