Anthony Waterman writes:

>After a Preface which states the theme, the book contains six chapters: 
>"Adam's Vision" on Smith and _Wealth of Nations_ (45 pages); "Gloomy 
>Science" which treats Malthus and Ricardo (41 pages); "The Severest 
>Critic" on Marx (69 pages); "On the Margins," chiefly about Jevons, Menger 
>and J. B. Clark, with an endnote on Veblen (22 pages); "Voices in the Air" 
>on Keynes with brief mention of Hayek and Schumpeter (34 pages); and 
>"Grand Illusions," which is a summing up (18 pages). These are followed by 
>14 pages of appendices on technical matters. It is apparent that 
>two-thirds of this text concerns four canonical authors of the so-called 
>"English School" -- Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and Marx -- followed by a mere 
>9 percent on what now constitutes the core of economic theory, and another 
>15 percent on Keynes and two of his contemporaries. The book might almost 
>be called "Political Economy of the English School with an Epilogue" -- 
>except that it totally ignores the most influential single author of that 
>"school," John Stuart Mill. The dust-jacket calls this "The Intelligent 
>Person's Guide to Economics": which implies that the intelligent person 
>will skip almost everything of importance that has happened in our 
>discipline over the past one hundred years.



I don't regard the fact that Foley's book devotes only 9% of its content to 
the "what now constitutes the core of economic theory,"  in any way 
disqualifies it from being an "intelligent person's  guide to economics", 
where "economics" means substantive knowledge of the economy, as opposed to 
whatever  credentialed economists happen to do. It is part of the the 
burden of Foley's argument that what now constitutes the core of economics 
in the latter, nominal, sense  is highly over-rated as economics in the 
substantive sense - compared  at any rate to the work of the thinkers to 
whom he devotes the remaining 91% of the book's content.

Kevin Quinn