The Man and His Vision

Abstract

Robert Heilbroner is one of the most widely read economists of the twentieth century. His rare ability to distill complex economic jargon into clear elegant prose has allowed his numerous books and articles to enjoy considerable popularity with the general public as well as the academic community. Generations of economists have cut their teeth on his 1953 classic, The Worldly Philosophers, currently in its sixth edition with well over three million copies in print. This book, or ‘annuity’ in Heilbroner’s words, has lured more than one unsuspecting soul into the dark world of economics. The success of this text in recruiting today’s practising economists has even led some to say that Heilbroner is responsible, to some small degree, for the state of economic science today. I am sure that such high praise from his peers would make Heilbroner very, very uncomfortable. Sidestepping for the moment the obvious trepidations of bearing accountability for the ‘dismal science’, to say Heilbroner is responsible for the state of modem economics is quite a stretch. For that matter, to call Heilbroner an economist is also a stretch. Heilbroner often shirks the label economist in favour of ‘intellectual’, ‘economic historian’ or ‘economic sociologist’.