About the Author

Thomas K. McCraw is Straus Professor of Business History Emeritus at Harvard Business School.

Reviews

"Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction" is a well-written and entrancing look at one of the twentieth century's most important economic and political thinkers. McCraw's book may rightly take its place as one of the two or three best biographies of an economist ever written...[It] is so splendid because it succeeds on so many different levels. If the book were simply an account of the Harvard economics department, it would stand as a lasting and significant contribution to the history of economic thought. Alternatively, it is one of the best treatments of what it was like for European intellectuals to migrate to the United States. Or are you interested in why Austria fell apart during the 1920s, and how someone with as little real world experience as Schumpeter became Minister of Finance? The book is also a love story, and an account of how a possibly dysfunctional man can nonetheless find romantic happiness after repeated failures and tragedies. Last but not

"Prophet of Innovation" is an immensely entertaining read.--Marisa Morrison"Washington Times" (07/08/2007)

[A] persuasive and eloquent biography.--Jay Hancock"Baltimore Sun" (04/22/2007)

[McGraw] has written an impressive and thoughtful biography of one of the most significant economists of the 20th century. Although widely regarded as a man of no small ego, Schumpeter can justifiably lay claim to effecting considerable scholarly debate in a wide range of academic backgrounds. Schumpeter's analysis of economic development and business cycles, his notion of the process and significance of creative destruction, and his views on entrepreneurial activities continue to influence generations of economists and social scientists. McGraw's thorough, insightful biography draws on an array of public and private papers to explain Schumpeter's scholarly development and increasing sway, from his early years in Vienna to Bonn and later to his tenure at Harvard. This engaging scholarly work provides substance and context and is well worth a close read by both students and faculty.--T.E. Sullivan"Choice" (09/01/2007)

[Schumpeter's] private life was no less fascinating than his public message. In "Prophet of Innovation", Thomas McCraw--emeritus professor of history at the Harvard Business School--artfully weaves the two together.--Dan Seligman"Wall Street Journal" (04/05/2007)

[Schumpeter] deserves more recognition and McCraw's book is to be welcomed on that account.--Pat McArdle"Irish Times" (06/04/2007)

A thinker as multifaceted as Schumpeter demands much of a biographer, and in "Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction", Thomas McCraw delivers...McCraw not only excels at conveying the innovation and excitement in Schumpeter's work, he keeps readers riveted to the story of the economist's life, and some of the twists are almost novelistic...[An] outstanding biography.--Daniel McCarthy"American Conservative" (07/16/2007)

Although Schumpeter died in 1950, McCraw is right to insist that his contributions to our understanding of the economies in which we live are still vital today.--Peter Timlin"Harvard Magazine" (07/01/2007)

An excellent, thorough and smoothly written biography of Joseph Schumpeter, the greatest economist of the 20th century. Too bad most politicos--and economists--don't fully grasp his insights.--Steve Forbes"Forbes" (10/06/2008)

An extraordinary new biography. "Prophet of Innovation" by Thomas K. McCraw chronicles the life of one of the 20th century's most original and insightful scholars...Like his contemporary and frequent rival John Maynard Keynes, Schumpeter makes for a rich biographical subject. Keynes received the treatment he deserved from Lord Robert Skidelsky's magisterial multi-volume biography. McCraw's effort, similarly, is worthy of Schumpeter.--Nick Schulz"National Review" (07/09/2007)

Books on the lives of the great economists might not, at first blush, set the blood coursing. Yet Robert Skidelsky's masterly three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes proved how engrossing such a life could be. It is high praise to say that Thomas McCraw's biography of Joseph Schumpeter, "Prophet of Innovation", has some of the same quality and appeal...McCraw, who has written the definitive biography of his subject, supplies many testimonials to Schumpeter's genius and influence from both his day and our own.--Robin Blackburn"The Nation" (09/24/2007)

In this biography, Pulitzer Prize winner McCraw neatly divides his emphasis between Schumpeter's professional and personal life. He portrays his subject as a somewhat self-absorbed insatiable scholar not entirely comfortable with his contemporaries, which might explain marriages and affairs with much older and younger women, as well as his affinity with students and often-strained relations with colleagues of his own generation. McGraw lucidly addresses Schumpeter's economic theories through an examination of his letters, lectures, addresses, articles, and major works...[An] insightful and highly readable biography.--Lawrence R. Maxted"Library Journal (starred review)" (04/01/2007)

It's no small feat to make a jaunty read out of the life of an economist dead more than 50 years, and Thomas K. McCraw has done just that in his impressive new biography of Joseph Schumpeter.--Kevin R. Kosar"Weekly Standard" (05/28/2007)

It's the lively and penetrating prose of the book itself that make its appearance in paperback a cause for rejoicing. Reading it is certainly time well-invested.--Abraham Benrubi"openlettersmonthly.com" (05/04/2010)

McCraw...frames his narrative confidently and writes beautifully...Best of all, McCraw is an extremely good interpreter of Schumpeter's published work.--David Warsh"economicprincipals.com" (04/01/2007)

McCraw's book on Schumpeter is an absorbing read, with short chapters, lots of personal detail and historical scene setting, and an important anti-Galbraithian economic theme.--Deirdre McCloskey"Reason" (10/01/2007)

McCraw's triumph is to tell...readers quite as much as we need to know about Schumpeter in a lucid and well-paced narrative, while also supplying, for more rigorous scholars, no fewer than two hundred pages of endnotes...McCraw successfully passes off the life of a professor of economics as a story that fully complements its undoubted intellectual significance with a tantalizing human interest.--Peter Clarke"London Review of Books" (07/19/2007)

Those seeking some escape from the deluge of "Keynes the Comeback Kid" will enjoy a refresher on that other brilliant economist of his generation, Joseph Schumpeter. Thomas K. McCraw's brilliant biography of the economist who best understood the turbulence of markets and "creative destruction" is all the more relevant as a credit crisis-induced recession unfolds. This biography is the clearest and most comprehensive guide to Schumpeter's life and work and the turbulence of his time which has, like the classic business cycle, come round again.--Bill Jamieson"The Spectator" (12/01/2008)

[A] persuasive and eloquent biography. -- Jay Hancock "Baltimore Sun" (04/22/2007)

McCraw doesn't get lost in the baroque details of Schumpeter's story--how many economists ever fought a duel?--or in the arcana of his theories, achieving a balance that his brilliant and restless subject rarely did in life.

Much honored as an economic prophet, Joseph Schumpeter has had to wait half a century after his death for this splendid full-dress biography covering his ideas, life, and times...[This is] a fat, learned biography by Thomas McCraw, one of America's most respected business historians, the author of a Pulitzer prize-winning history of the rise of regulation. He has found the perfect subject in Schumpeter. He succeeds in getting inside the economist's head, explaining not just what he thought but why he thought it. Beyond this, he also succeeds in painting a portrait of his times. "Fin de siecle" Vienna, Weimar Germany, Harvard University before and after the first world war: all come to life on these pages.