Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius
Sylvia Nasar
A brilliant new approach to the story of modern economics and to understanding how we got into today's financial mess. As the twenty-first century faces new and ever more daunting economic obstacles, Sylvia Nasar tells the story of how our financial world came to function as it does today, and how a handful of men and women would change the lives of every person on the planet. Economics was not always associated with bankers and excess, or with recessions and bailouts. Economics, as we know it, was born in the nineteenth century when Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew chronicled the destitution in London's slums and wanted to turn money into a force for social good. Man's material fate would be placed in his own hands, rather than left to destiny. The torch would be carried on by everyone from Marx and Engels to Keynes and Friedman, with revolutionary results.
Award History
1 wins · 1 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and TechnologyMajor | 2011 | Winner | Secondary source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- Charles Dickens44%
- Henry Mayhew38%
02 Central places
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
03 Suggested argument
No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.
This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.
Economic thought arose in the nineteenth century to use money for social good, and the development described leads to today’s financial world and the present “financial mess.”
Model confidence 36%
04 Reading orientation
38 / 100 academicSerious trade
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 41%.