Dr. Strangelove's Game : A Brief History of Economic Genius Book

Paul Strathern describes the lives and thinking of some of the best known economic thinkers, from Adam Smith through David Ricardo to Alan Greenspan, and (somehow) manages to detail their major ideas in comprehensible and surprisingly funny ways.

The book begins with John von Neumann - the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's cold-war satire. von Neumann advised the US government on nuclear strategy in the 1950s, right up to the time he was so mentally ill that he had to be kept under watch in hospital by nurses with top-secret security clearance in case he gave away state secrets.

The portrayal of this character sets the scene for the book as a whole: von Neumann, and the subsequent thinkers described, are introduced as people with characters set in particular contexts - before their major ideas (game theory for von Neumann) are discussed. This balance of biography and economics is what renders the book so readable and engaging.

The choice of individuals to discuss helps as well: not only are the familiar faces of economics looked at - and often with an unusual focus on their lives and circumstances than textbooks would indulge - but far less well known characters than Adam Smith are given the spotlight too. Strathern revels in describing these less familiar often much more eccentric personalities. We hear about Henri de Saint-Simon - who toured the world, pitching bold, totally underdeveloped ideas: after failing to get the viceroy of Mexico to approve a canal through the country, he succeeded in getting the Spanish to agree to a similar scheme between Madrid and Seville. It wasn't until the government had earmarked 6,000 men for the task that they realised Saint-Simon's plan consisted of nothing more than the idea itself. He subsequently fled to revolutionary France where the the Comte was, naturally, imprisoned. This is not all for entertainment: Saint-Simon is given a fair hearing by Strathern who stresses the man's prescient view of scientific progress and praises his emphasis on the need to temper economics with a dose of humanity as well, something lacking from many of his contemporaries cold analysis.

Another amazing character I was totally unaware of is John Law - a Scotsman who was sentenced to death in England, escaped to France and ended up owning the first bank in France - the Banque Royale. Combined with essentially owning most of the French territories in the now-United States and a heap of French chateaux to boot he is reckoned to have been one of the wealthiest people of all time. We hear in great depth the life and impacts of this man and for this alone the book is well worth reading.

This book has its limitations, the most significant is the lack of a discernible thread holding it all together. While the author does make a few tenuous links back to John von Neumann (Dr. Strangelove) - the discussion of whom bookends the work - it is far from clear at times why particular individuals are being discussed and whether or not the aim is to frame the book by the maverick Hungarian.

At other times the author's distain for the more theoretical (read: less human-concerned) side of economics comes out and this may also be the book's ultimate point: that the story of economics has been too skewed to the side of the theories and models of homo economicus (as the subject's fictitious "rational" person is dubbed). To this must be added an accounting of homo sapiens - how people actually behave - alongside an ethics as well. But I may be adding this narrative gloss. In other words: I don't entirely know why this book was written or what its aim was, making it appear somewhat inchoate.

Yet this remains a wonderfully readable discussion of a cast of exciting people interspersed with a somewhat disjoined but admirably understandable history of economics. A definite read but one that could just as easily be dipped in and out of as read in one go.