"Fascinating. . . . . A wide-ranging and challenging book that can be read profitably both by economists and a wider spectrum of readers interested in the history of science."

David Thorsby | Times Literary Supplement

"Schabas is a gifted writer tackling a dense and difficult subject.She ably packs a sufficient history of economic thought to make her point into less than 160 pages of text.The more than thirty pages of references . . . aptly documents the depth of the echolarship supporting the book."

Andrew P. Morriss | Books & Culture

"It will no longer be possible for historians to discuss early modern economic thought as if the economic domain were autonomous. . . . [The book] proposes a host of fascinating connections between nature and economy, material to awaken our curiosity and to disturb the neat categories we often like to impose on the knowledge of the past."

Theodore M. Porter | Nuncius

“This is an essential book for anyone who is interested in understanding the dominant role that the discipline of economics is playing in our current world order.  Through her meticulous historical reconstruction, Schabas shows how economists came to see themselves as agents in a human order that they might change for the better, rather than as mere observers of immutable natural laws. In the process, as she also shows, the philosophical ideas of Utilitarianism came to be embedded within the ‘scientific’ discourse of economics, where their controversial normative content escaped people’s notice, as it often still does today. Anyone who wants to challenge this powerful framework needs to begin by understanding it, and Schabas is an exhilarating guide.”--Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago

Martha Nussbaum

"[The book] tells a convincing story about theories of price and value. . . . All the chapters are lucidly written, candidly argued, and illuminating."

Ted Underwood | Eighteenth-Century Life