Who, Ed Balls aside*, ever thought endogenous growth theory could be sexy? Tyler Cowen, for one. He highly recommend's Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery, a new book by David Warsh.
Maybe this is the book of the year so far... While it pretends to focus on a single article -- Paul Romer's 1990 piece on endogenous growth -- the book is a tour de force through growth theory, the economics profession, the world of public intellectuals, and how science works. Paul Krugman, Greg Mankiw, Bob Solow, and Bob Lucas play prominent roles, in addition of course to Romer. If you want to read one book on how the economics profession works, this is it.
* The reference is to a notorious 1994 speech by UK Chancellor Gordon Brown, which rather clumsily referred to 'post neo-classical endogenous growth theory'. Tory Michael Heseltine retorted: "It's not Brown's. It's Balls." This was a reference to Brown's economic advisor, Ed Balls.
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