Five Best: Lives of Economists
Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist By George J. Stigler (1985) 1. Although he never reached the renown of his lifelong friend Milton Friedman, George Stigler was a founding member of the Chicago school of economics.
His charming and readable memoir—really a linked series of vignettes—recounts his time at Chicago, from graduate school to professor. He touches upon the main ideas of the Chicago school, from regulatory capture to monetarism, but his passion is in describing the quirky, brilliant and infuriating personalities that collided in and around the economics department. Riveting accounts of notable moments in the history of economic thought include the “Coase conversion evening"—a long argument that ended with Friedman convincing 20 economists to embrace a founding theorem of the law and economics movement.
“What an exhilarating event," Stigler recalls. “I lamented afterward that we had not had the clairvoyance to tape it." Cameos range from George Shultz to Paul Samuelson. Through it all, Stigler’s dry wit and command of economic history leaven this celebration of life among what Stigler dubs the professional “pourers of cold water." Charlotte Perkins Gilman By Cynthia Davis (2010) 2.
This deeply researched biography follows the life of a woman we might consider the first practitioner of “freakonomics." Today Charlotte Perkins Gilman is best known for “The Yellow Wallpaper," her chilling short story about a woman undergoing a mental breakdown. In Gilded Age America, however, she was famous for “Women and Economics" (1898), her look at women’s roles in society through an economic lens. Cynthia Davis deftly summarizes the book’s central argument: “Women had lagged behind men .
. . because they had, for natural and
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