An instant New York Times bestseller, in a sweeping narrative the author of the esteemed A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women who changed the lives of every single person on the planet. Grand Pursuit is the epic story of the making of modern economics, of how economics rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands. "Full of flesh, bloom, and warmth…. Grand Pursuit deserves a place not only in every economist's study but also on every serious reader's bedside table." The Economist "Like Lords of Finance, Grand Pursuit is narrative history at its finest." Bloomberg.com "A worthy successor to Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers….Nasar's aim is to put the reader into the lives of the characters of a sweeping historical drama that extends from Victorian England to modern-day India." The Washington Post "Capacious and absorbing." The New Yorker "Nasar brilliantly brings to life game-changing economists from Marx to Hayek and from Sidney Webb to Milton Friedman, tracing the evolution of modern economic thinking through the richly detailed stories of the men and woman who reshaped how we think of life's possibilities." The Boston Globe

Sylvia Nasar is the author of the bestselling A Beautiful Mind, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography. She is the John S. and James L. Knight Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.