Advance Comment

“Nowadays everybody knows that ideas—not just money—make the world go round or that information is a potent source of power in the marketplace. But nobody really knew these things until some unorthodox young economists pointed them out. Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations is both a fascinating saga of intellectual discovery and an amazing glimpse into the workings of ‘the economic mind.’”
— Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind

“This book is a stunner. Warsh the journalist gives us the history of a revolutionary idea in economics and makes his story read like a novel of suspense. Warsh the economist brilliantly explains the sources and meaning of the dynamic economic environment in which we live today. The book is must reading for economists but also for everyone seeking to understand the bewildering changes wrought by high technology and the Internet.”
— Peter L. Bernstein, author of Against the Gods

“David Warsh does a marvelous job with the story of Paul Romer and the new growth theory. His description of what Paul did is accurate and exciting, and it gives a great sense of the way theoretical economics is done today and of how it contributes to advances on the questions that Adam Smith and David Ricardo posed 200 years ago.”
— Robert Lucas, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in economics

“A lively account of the emergence of the modern stress on the role of knowledge in explaining the successes and failures of economic growth, David Warsh’s Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations is particularly good in tracing the historical roots of these views over the last two centuries. Not everyone will agree with his particular stresses but everyone will enjoy the vista, and even those most involved will learn something new.”
— Kenneth J. Arrow, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in economics

“Romer’s understated but earth shattering work deserves our attention and a Nobel prize in economics.”
— John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

“What a wonderful book! No one but David Warsh could have written an exciting and entertaining book about the curious fate of an economic concept. How the very idea of knowledge entered economic thinking, and its journey to the present day, is Warsh’s great dream, and while it may sound dry, it is anything but. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to better understand how policy-makers, practitioners and professors try to make sense of the world.”

— Lawrence Prusak, author of Working Knowledge