Overview

Originally published in 1776, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America's founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking. Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith's ideas, revealing how his popular image as a champion of American-style capitalism and free markets is a historical invention. Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith's original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher. Charting the enduring fascination that this humble philosopher from Scotland has held for American readers over more than two centuries, Adam Smith's America shows how Smith continues to be a vehicle for articulating perennial moral and political anxieties about modern capitalism.

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Glory M. Liu is a college fellow in social studies at Harvard University. Her work has appeared in publications such as Modern Intellectual History, the Washington Post, and Aeon. Kate Udall is an experienced stage, television, and film actress. She has starred in numerous Broadway and off Broadway plays, including The Waves and Night of the Iguana. Her television credits include appearances on Law & Order and Blue Bloods. A graduate of Yale University, she lives in New York City.

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