Deirdre N. McCloskey's Books

Crossing

A Memoir

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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We have read the stories of those who have "crossed" lines of race and class and culture. But few have written of crossing—completely and entirely—the gender line. Crossing is the story of Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald), once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s and 1960s privilege, and her dramatic and poignant journey to becoming a woman. McCloskey's account of her painstaking efforts to learn to "be a woman" unearth fundamental questions about gender and identity, and hatreds and anxieties, revealing surprising answers.

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308

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

0226556727

ISBN 13

9780226556727

If You're So Smart

The Narrative of Economic Expertise

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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If You're So Smart

The Narrative of Economic Expertise

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

In this witty, accessible, and revealing book, Deirdre McCloskey demystifies economic theory and practice to show that behind the economists claim to certainty is the ancient art of storytelling. If You're So Smart will engage, enlighten, and empower anyone trying to evaluate the experts who stand ready to engineer our lives. "Writing with delicious wit and great seriousness."—Publishers Weekly. " "McCloskey is more interesting on an uninspired day than most of her peers can manage at their very best."—Peter Passell, New York Times

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208

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

0226556700

ISBN 13

9780226556703

Bourgeois Equality

How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched the World

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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Bourgeois Equality

How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched the World

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

The last 200 years have witnessed a 100-fold leap in well-being. Deirdre McCloskey argues that most people today are stunningly better off than their forbearers were in 1800, and that the rest of humanity will soon be. A purely materialist, incentivist view of economic change does not explain this leap. We have now the third in McCloskey's three-volume opus about how bourgeois values transformed Europe. Volume 3 nails the case for that transfiguration, telling us how aristocratic virtues of hierarchy were replaced by bourgeois virtues (more precisely, by attitudes toward virtues) that made it possible for ordinary folk with novel ideas to change the way people, farmed, manufactured, traveled, ruled themselves, and fought. It is a dramatic story, and joins a dramatic debate opened up by Thomas Piketty in his best-selling Capital in the 21st Century. McCloskey insists that economists are far too preoccupied by capital and saving, arguing against the position (of Piketty and most others) that capital induces a tendency to get more, that money reproduces itself, that riches are created from riches. Not so, our intrepid McCloskey shows. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, among the biggest wealth accumulators in our era, didn't get rich through the magic of compound interest on capital. They got rich through intellectual property, creating billions of dollars from virtually nothing. Capital was no more important an ingredient to the original Apple or Microsoft than cookies or cucumbers. The debate is between those who think riches are created from riches versus those who, with McCloskey, think riches are created from rags, between those who see profits as a generous return on capital, or profits coming from innovation that ultimately benefits us all.

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830

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

022652793X

ISBN 13

9780226527932

Bourgeois Dignity

Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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Bourgeois Dignity

Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

Arguing that the biggest economic story of our times is how China & India have embraced neoliberalism, Deirdre McCloskey suggests that economic change depends less on foreign trade, investment or material causes, & a whole lot more on ideas & what people believe.

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588

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

0226556743

ISBN 13

9780226556741

Economical Writing, Third Edition

Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

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Economical Writing, Third Edition

Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Write clearly about any subject: “Writers should check out Economical Writing, and editors should recommend it. Your future readers will be thankful.” —Journal of Scholarly Publishing Economics is not a field known for good writing. Charts, yes. Sparkling prose, no. Except, that is, when it comes to Deirdre Nansen McCloskey. Her conversational and witty yet always clear style is a hallmark of her classic works of economic history, enlivening the dismal science and engaging readers well beyond the discipline. And now she’s here to share the secrets of how it’s done, no matter what your field. Economical Writing is itself economical: a collection of thirty-five pithy rules for making your writing clear, concise, and effective. Proceeding from big-picture ideas to concrete strategies for improvement at the level of the paragraph, sentence, or word, McCloskey shows us that good writing, after all, is not just a matter of taste—it’s a product of adept intuition and a rigorous revision process. Debunking stale rules, warning us that “footnotes are nests for pedants,” and offering an arsenal of readily applicable tools and methods, she shows writers of all levels of experience how to rethink the way they approach their work, and gives them the knowledge to turn mediocre prose into magic. At once efficient and digestible, hilarious and provocative, Economical Writing lives up to its promise. With McCloskey as our guide, we discover how any piece of writing—on economics or any other subject—can be a pleasure to read.

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165

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

022644810X

ISBN 13

9780226448107

Bourgeois Equality

How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched the World

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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Bourgeois Equality

How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions, Enriched the World

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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830

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University of Chicago Press

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022652793X

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9780226527932

Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

Argues that economics is a science, but a human science: a witty guide to the ins and outs of economic philosophy.

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468

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Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521436036

ISBN 13

9780521436038

Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

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Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Introduction The Argument in Brief -- Economics Is in Scientific Trouble -- An Antique, Unethical, and Badly Measured Behaviorism Doesn't Yield Good Economic Science or Good Politics -- Economics Needs to Get Serious about Measuring the Economy -- The Number of Unmeasured "Imperfections" Is Embarrassingly Long -- Historical Economics Can Measure Them, Showing Them to Be Small -- The Worst of Orthodox Positivism Lacks Ethics and Measurement -- Neoinstitutionalism Shares in the Troubles -- Even the Best of Neoinstitutionalism Lacks Measurement -- And "Culture," or Mistaken History, Will Not Repair It -- That Is, Neoinstitutionalism, Like the Rest of Behavioral Positivism, Fails as History and as Economics -- As It Fails in Logic and in Philosophy -- Neoinstitutionalism, in Short, Is Not a Scientific Success -- Humanomics Can Save the Science -- But It's Been Hard for Positivists to Understand Humanomics -- Yet We Can Get a Humanomics -- And Although We Can't Save Private Max U -- We Can Save an Ethical Humanomics.

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229

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226819442

ISBN 13

9780226819440

The Rhetoric of Economics

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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The Rhetoric of Economics

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

A classic in its field, this pathbreaking book humanized the scientific rhetoric of economics to reveal its literary soul. Economics needs to admit that it, like other sciences, works with metaphors and stories. Its most mathematical and statistical moments are properly dominated by comparison and narration, that is to say, human persuasion. The book was McCloskey's opening move in the development of a "humanomics," and unification of the sciences and the humanities on the field of ordinary business life.

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249

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Univ of Wisconsin Press

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ISBN 10

0299158136

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9780299158132

Bourgeois Dignity

Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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Bourgeois Dignity

Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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588

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226556743

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9780226556741

Enterprise and Trade in Victorian Britain

Essays in Historical Economics

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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Enterprise and Trade in Victorian Britain

Essays in Historical Economics

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

The essays in this book focus on the controversies concerning Britain's economic performance between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War. The overriding theme is that Britain's own resources were consistently more productive, more resilient and more successful than is normally assumed. And if the economy's achievement was considerable, the influence on it of external factors (trade, international competition, policy) were much less significant than is normally supposed. The book is structured as follows: Part One: The Method of Historical Economics Part Two: Enterprise in Late Victorian Britain Part Three: Britain in the World Economy, 1846-1913.

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240

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Psychology Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0415313058

ISBN 13

9780415313056

If You're So Smart

The Narrative of Economic Expertise

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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If You're So Smart

The Narrative of Economic Expertise

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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208

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

0226556700

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9780226556703

A Bibliography of Historical Economics to 1980

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey,George K. Hersh

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A Bibliography of Historical Economics to 1980

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey,George K. Hersh

Historians and economists will find here what their fields have in common - the movement since the 1950s known variously as 'cliometrics', 'economic history', or 'historical economics'. A leading figure in the movement, Donald McCloskey, has compiled, with the help of George Hersh and a panel of distinguished advisors, a highly comprehensive bibliography of historical economics covering the period up until 1980. The book will be useful to all economic historians, as well as quantitative historians, applied economists, historical demographers, business historians, national income accountants, and social historians.

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536

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Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521403278

ISBN 13

9780521403276

The Cult of Statistical Significance

How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,Steve Ziliak

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The Cult of Statistical Significance

How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,Steve Ziliak

“McCloskey and Ziliak have been pushing this very elementary, very correct, very important argument through several articles over several years and for reasons I cannot fathom it is still resisted. If it takes a book to get it across, I hope this book will do it. It ought to.” —Thomas Schelling, Distinguished University Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, and 2005 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics “With humor, insight, piercing logic and a nod to history, Ziliak and McCloskey show how economists—and other scientists—suffer from a mass delusion about statistical analysis. The quest for statistical significance that pervades science today is a deeply flawed substitute for thoughtful analysis. . . . Yet few participants in the scientific bureaucracy have been willing to admit what Ziliak and McCloskey make clear: the emperor has no clothes.” —Kenneth Rothman, Professor of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Health The Cult of Statistical Significance shows, field by field, how “statistical significance,” a technique that dominates many sciences, has been a huge mistake. The authors find that researchers in a broad spectrum of fields, from agronomy to zoology, employ “testing” that doesn’t test and “estimating” that doesn’t estimate. The facts will startle the outside reader: how could a group of brilliant scientists wander so far from scientific magnitudes? This study will encourage scientists who want to know how to get the statistical sciences back on track and fulfill their quantitative promise. The book shows for the first time how wide the disaster is, and how bad for science, and it traces the problem to its historical, sociological, and philosophical roots. Stephen T. Ziliak is the author or editor of many articles and two books. He currently lives in Chicago, where he is Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University. Deirdre N. McCloskey, Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of twenty books and three hundred scholarly articles. She has held Guggenheim and National Humanities Fellowships. She is best known for How to Be Human* Though an Economist (University of Michigan Press, 2000) and her most recent book, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (2006).

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349

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University of Michigan Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0472026100

ISBN 13

9780472026104

How to be Human-- Though an Economist

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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How to be Human-- Though an Economist

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

A witty and thoughtful romp through the profession and practice of economics

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304

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University of Michigan Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0472067443

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9780472067442

Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich

How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,Art Carden

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Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich

How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,Art Carden

A “thought-provoking” one-volume distillation of the author’s powerful trilogy in praise of the middle class’s role in creating a better, and richer, world (Library Journal). The economist and historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been best known recently for her Bourgeois Era trilogy, a vigorous defense, unrivaled in scope, of commercially tested betterment. Its massive volumes, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality, solve Adam Smith’s puzzle of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, and of the moral sentiments of modernity. The world got rich, she argues, not chiefly by material causes but by an idea and a sentiment, a new admiration for the middle class and its egalitarian liberalism. For readers looking for a distillation of McCloskey’s magisterial work, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich is what you’ve been waiting for. In this lively volume, McCloskey and the economist and journalist Art Carden bring together the trilogy’s key ideas and its most provocative arguments. The rise of the west, and now the rest, is the story of the rise of ordinary people to a dignity and liberty inspiring them to have a go. The outcome was an explosion of innovation after 1800, and a rise of real income by an astounding 3,000 percent. The Great Enrichment, well beyond the conventional Industrial Revolution, did not, McCloskey and Carden show, come from the usual suspects, capital accumulation or class struggle. It came from the idea of economic liberty in Holland and the Anglosphere, then Sweden and Japan, then Italy and Israel and China and India, an idea that bids fair in the next few generations to raise up the wretched of the earth. The original shift to liberalism arose from 1517 to 1789 from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, upending ancient hierarchies. McCloskey and Carden contend further that liberalism and “innovism” made us better humans as well as richer ones. Not matter but ideas. Not corruption but improvement. Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich draws in entertaining fashion on history, economics, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, from growth theory to the Simpsons. It is the perfect introduction for a broad audience to McCloskey’s influential explanation of how we got rich. At a time when confidence in the economic system is under challenge, this book mounts an optimistic and persuasive defense of liberal innovism, and of the modern world it has wrought. Praise for the Bourgeois Era Trilogy “A contender for the great book of our age.” —The Times, Book of the Week “Persuasive . . . richly detailed and erudite.” —Financial Times

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246

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

022673983X

ISBN 13

9780226739830

The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,Alberto Mingardi

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The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,Alberto Mingardi

A common narrative of the post-World War II economists was that the State is indispensable for guiding investment and fostering innovation. They claimed that the wealth of the modern world is the result of past State guidance and that what is needed for future economic growth is more State guidance. This position has recently been rejuvenated in reaction to the Great Recession of 2008. The truth is that the enriched modern economy was not a product of State coercion. It was a product of a change in political and social rhetoric in northwestern Europe from 1517 to 1789. The Great Enrichment, that is, came from human ingenuity emancipated from the bottom up, not human ingenuity directed from the top down. The true question is what on balance is the best way to organize innovation—by the “wise State” or by commercially tested betterment? The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity. The Adam Smith Institute is one of the world's leading think tanks, recognised as the best domestic and international economic policy think-tank in the UK and ranked 2nd in the world among Independent Think Tanks by the University of Pennsylvania. Independent, non-profit and non-partisan, the Adam Smith Institute works to promote free market, neoliberal ideas through research, publishing, media outreach, and education. The Institute is today at the forefront of making the case for free markets and a free society in the United Kingdom. The Institute was founded in the 1970s, as post-war socialism reached its high-watermark. Then, as now, its purpose was to educate the public about free markets and economic policy, and to inject sound ideas into the public debate.

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263

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American Institute for Economic Research

Published Date

ISBN 10

1630692093

ISBN 13

9781630692094

Second Thoughts

Myths and Morals of U.S. Economic History

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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Second Thoughts

Myths and Morals of U.S. Economic History

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

This volume contains essays on topics in economic history that have a direct relevance to present policy debates. The contributors discuss banking regulations, immigration and Third World development policies. Each essay explores the role of government pol

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219

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Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195101189

ISBN 13

9780195101188

Economic Maturity and Entrepreneurial Decline

British Iron and Steel, 1870-1913

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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Economic Maturity and Entrepreneurial Decline

British Iron and Steel, 1870-1913

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

It is often alleged that late Victorian businessmen in Britain displayed little of the vigor of their fathers in competition with the new industrial powers of the late nineteenth century, Germany and the United States. This allegation has been the foundation for a great many interpretations of the end of British domination over the world's economic life and of the economic difficulties that Britain has faced subsequently. The British iron and steel industry is taken traditionally as the prime example of entrepreneurial decline. Mr. McCloskey shows, however, that businessmen in the industry performed on most counts as well as their German and American counterparts. The lack of evidence of entrepreneurial failure in the industry casts serious doubt on the importance of the entrepreneurial factor in Britain's relative decline. It suggests, indeed, that the supposed failure was a mere reflex of Britain's early attainment of economic maturity and the contemporaneous drive to maturity of Germany and the United States. McCloskey uses relatively uncomplicated economic tools to establish these points. The central tool is the measurement of total factor productivity in the iron and steel industry in Britain and abroad. It is supplemented by analyses of supply and demand (to remove the influence of slowly growing demand at home from the record of the British industry): of the profitability of adopting the basic open hearth process of steelmaking (to show that the slowness of Britain to adopt it-which has been the keystone of the case for entrepreneurial failure-was economically rational); and of the competitiveness of the industry's markets (to validate use of these simple tools). The book is based on a thorough study of the trade newspapers of the industry, its scientific journals, its statistical annuals, and the many reports of the British government and contemporary observers on its activities. It combines, therefore, the virtues of the "old" and the 'new" economic history. And although the book is historical, its conclusions are relevant to any study of economic growth past or present, in particular to the study of the role of entrepreneurship. This book, a revision of Mr. McCloskey's Ph.D. dissertation, was awarded the David A. Wells Prize for l970-7l. The author is Associate Professor of Economics, The University of Chicago.

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184

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Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674228758

ISBN 13

9780674228757

Why Liberalism Works

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

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Why Liberalism Works

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

An insightful and passionately written book explaining why a return to Enlightenment ideals is good for the world "Beginning with the simple but fertile idea that people should not push other people around, Deirdre McCloskey presents an elegant defense of 'true liberalism' as opposed to its well-meaning rivals on the left and the right. Erudite, but marvelously accessible and written in a style that is at once colloquial and astringent."--Stanley Fish The greatest challenges facing humankind, according to Deirdre McCloskey, are poverty and tyranny, both of which hold people back. Arguing for a return to true liberal values, this engaging and accessible book develops, defends, and demonstrates how embracing the ideas first espoused by eighteenth-century philosophers like Locke, Smith, Voltaire, and Wollstonecraft is good for everyone. With her trademark wit and deep understanding, McCloskey shows how the adoption of Enlightenment ideals of liberalism has propelled the freedom and prosperity that define the quality of a full life. In her view, liberalism leads to equality, but equality does not necessarily lead to liberalism. Liberalism is an optimistic philosophy that depends on the power of rhetoric rather than coercion, and on ethics, free speech, and facts in order to thrive.

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399

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Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300235089

ISBN 13

9780300235081

The Rhetoric of Economics

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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The Rhetoric of Economics

By: Deirdre N. McCloskey

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249

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Univ of Wisconsin Press

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ISBN 10

0299158136

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9780299158132

The Bourgeois Virtues

Ethics for an Age of Commerce

By: Deirdre Nansen

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The Bourgeois Virtues

Ethics for an Age of Commerce

By: Deirdre Nansen

For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us. McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations. High Noon, Kant, Bill Murray, the modern novel, van Gogh, and of course economics and the economy all come into play in a book that can only be described as a monumental project and a life’s work. The Bourgeois Virtues is nothing less than a dazzling reinterpretation of Western intellectual history, a dead-serious reply to the critics of capitalism—and a surprising page-turner.

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637

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

0226556670

ISBN 13

9780226556673

The Bourgeois Virtues

Ethics for an Age of Commerce

By: Deirdre Nansen

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The Bourgeois Virtues

Ethics for an Age of Commerce

By: Deirdre Nansen

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637

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University of Chicago Press

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0226556670

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9780226556673

Crossing

A Transgender Memoir

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

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Crossing

A Transgender Memoir

By: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year “I visited womanhood and stayed. It was not for the pleasures, though I discovered many I had not imagined, and many pains too. But calculating pleasures and pains was not the point. The point was who I am.” Once a golden boy of conservative economics and a child of 1950s privilege, Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald) had wanted to change genders from the age of eleven. But it was a different time, one hostile to any sort of straying from the path—against gays, socialists, women with professions, men without hats, and so on—and certainly against gender transition. Finally, in 1995, at the age of fifty-three, it was time for McCloskey to cross the gender line. Crossing is the story of McCloskey’s dramatic and poignant transformation from Donald to Dee to Deirdre. She chronicles the physical procedures and emotional evolution required and the legal and cultural roadblocks she faced in her journey to womanhood. By turns searing and humorous, this is the unflinching, unforgettable story of her transformation—what she lost, what she gained, and the women who lifted her up along the way.

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