'A history of economics which is full of flesh, bloom and warmth...GRAND PURSUIT deserves a place not only in every economist's study but also on every serious reader's bedside table' ECONOMIST 'Much of GRAND PURSUIT may be a reminder that as bad as things seem now, they have been worse - much worse - and that those difficult times can shed light on what is happening today. Economists have always tried to come up with theories about how to stimulate flaccid economies. The reader finishes Nasar's book wondering what brilliant and quirky thinker may fill in the next chapters of our economic history and come up with an idea that shakes our current economy out of its funk' LOS ANGELES TIMES 'A superb writer, fully meeting the standard set by Robert Heilbroner, in his THE WORLDLY PHILOSOPHERS (1953), for graceful writing on a difficult subject...you can't help becoming engrossed in [her heroes'] lives...The book is a kind of portrait gallery of economic thinkers, each artfully set down in his or her time and place' WALL STREET JOURNAL