RaveBoston ReviewAppelbaum...writes lucidly about a number of connected subjects: the content of economics scholarship during the postwar era, the highly interpersonal and institution-specific story of how particular ideas and individuals came to have influence with those in power, and, most strikingly, how economists came to enter policymaking and insinuate themselves into the governing class ... The result is a convincing historical interpretation that shows both the origins and consequences of economists’ most self-serving myths ... No one has told this whole story, operating over multiple economic subfields, as well as Appelbaum. In fact, Appelbaum’s assiduousness with the sources and the thoroughness of his footnotes means that the book will be of some use even to the scholarly community, since very few have such facility spanning all the domains that Appelbaum covers. But it is exactly because Appelbaum’s book is so good and so convincing that I fear his subjects will find reason to denounce it rather than take seriously what it has to say.
