RaveThe Wall Street JournalThe British politician and philosopher Jesse Norman has written that rarest of things, a wise book accessible to the general reader ... If you want to understand Adam Smith’s \'obvious and simple system of natural liberty\' (as Smith himself put it), his \'liberal plan of [social] equality, [economic] liberty and [legal] justice,\' you’ll want to devour Mr. Norman’s Adam Smith: Father of Economics ... In fact, you’ll want to read Mr. Norman and then Smith if you have any thought at all of getting beyond the clichés of left and right to understand why we need a middle—or maybe something different ... he combines canniness with strict historical accuracy, philosophical depth and, episodically, economic sense ... Mr. Norman stays close to Smith’s texts, and among of the pleasures of the book is the collection of pithy turns of phrase ... The worst passages in Mr. Norman’s very good book, that is, come from accepting the axiom that markets are highly imperfect yet easily corrected ... If you are a compassionate conservative of Romney’s sort, father and son, you will delight in Adam Smith: Father of Economics. If you are what Americans call a \'liberal,\' you can get along with it, too, unless you go to full socialism.
