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james_z's review
3.0
Good summary on the original text. Although it is unavoidable that the author cherry-picks concepts that best align his belief, nevertheless this book provides insights into the different sources of wealth in the modern context. For those who think this book cuts out much of the original book, you will be surprised on how much time you could save if you had to churn down all the ancient case studies.
dear_old_world's review
3.0
Having not yet read The Wealth of Nations myself, I can only assume that this essentially achieves what it sets out to do. In any case, it is certainly well-explained and simply written and as such, easy to follow.
However, I found myself very frustrated by the fact that I simply could not read this in any really critical way because it is written so much like a textbook. It makes statements as though they are facts, and because I am no expert in economics, I feel fundamentally ill-equipped to judge whether or not those statements are truly valid. I think it is probably important for a person to read the source material and only use this as a refresher later on. I intend to do this myself, so that I can have a better understanding of how Smith came to his conclusions and decide for myself the merit they hold.
However, I found myself very frustrated by the fact that I simply could not read this in any really critical way because it is written so much like a textbook. It makes statements as though they are facts, and because I am no expert in economics, I feel fundamentally ill-equipped to judge whether or not those statements are truly valid. I think it is probably important for a person to read the source material and only use this as a refresher later on. I intend to do this myself, so that I can have a better understanding of how Smith came to his conclusions and decide for myself the merit they hold.
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