Economics and history collide to teach us some new lessons

Although Linda Yueh's prose can be a little dry in places, she does, thankfully, find space for human details such as Smith banging his head against a wall while dictating The Wealth of Nations

Karl Marx would probably be appalled by modern-day China Pic: Getty

Economics: The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, By Linda Yueh, Viking, €23

Linda Yueh’s new book might well have been inspired by a scene from the seminal US television drama The Wire. After the drugs kingpin Stringer Bell has been killed, two police detectives go to check out his apartment. One of them scans the dead man’s bookshelves and is shocked to find a well-thumbed copy of The Wealth ...