Table of Contents

Introduction

I The Economic Background

One Capitalism: Where Do We Come From?

Two Three Great Economists

Three A Bird's-Eye View of the Economy

Four The Trend of Things

II Macroeconomics -- The Analysis of Prosperity and Recession

Five The GDP

Six Saving and Investing

Seven Passive Consumption, Active Investment

Eight The Economics of the Public Sector

Nine The Debate About Government

Ten What Money Is

Eleven How Money Works

III Microeconomics -- The Anatomy of the Market System

Twelve How Markets Work

Thirteen Where Markets Fail

Fourteen The Two Worlds of Business

IV Problems

Fifteen The Specter of Inflation

Sixteen The Inequality Problem

Seventeen Globalization

Eighteen National Policy in a Globalized World

Nineteen The Unfinished Revolution

Index

About the Author

Robert L. Heilbroner was an American economist and historian of economic thought. The author of some 20 books, Heilbroner was best known for The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, a survey of the lives and contributions of famous economists, notably Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.

Lester Carl Thurow was a political economist, former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, and author of books on economic topics.

Reviews

The Boston Globe An excellent course in the history of capitalism and socialism, of growth, progress, and decline.

Ms. At last, a patient but not condescending, detailed but not recondite, conversational but not glib discussion of the factors and terms that any reader of the daily newspaper needs to understand.

Robert B. Reich, former Secretary of Labor and author of Locked in the Cabinet In this delightfully written primer, Heilbroner and Thurow sweep away the debris of economic theory to expose the political and social choices lying just below it.