How to be Human*: *Though an Economist | 
| Author: Deirdre Nansen Mccloskey
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Category: Book
List Price: $20.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 531542
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0472067443
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.1
EAN: 9780472067442
ASIN: 0472067443
Publication Date: November 10, 2000
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Product Description
In this thoroughly engaging book Deirdre McCloskey puts the "dismal science" under the microscope. She offers advice to young economists, offering models from the old; and she lambastes the middle-aged who have allowed economics to become, as she puts it with characteristic verve, "a boys' game in a sandbox." McCloskey deploys her wit and style to serious purpose: to bring economics back to science.
Anyone can learn about the field of economics from How to Be Human. She can learn how economics works as a discipline and as a piece of sociology, who the heroes are and the villains, how a career in economics relates to matters of ethics and epistemology. She can learn what it is like to be a new woman in a boys' subject, a subject that avoids at all costs the word "love."
During the 1990s Deirdre McCloskey established herself as the main internal critic of the economic mainstream. Her quarterly columns in the Eastern Economic Journal, many of which are collected here, have become a handbook for reform. Trained in economics herself, she knows the normal science of the field from the inside: she has done it as a distinguished economic historian; and has watched it work from the faculties of Chicago (for twelve years) and Iowa (for nineteen), and now at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Her criticism from the inside is that the two methods on which economics has depended since the 1940s--existence-theorem mathematics and significance-testing statistics--are nonsense. They have, she claims, nothing to do with economic science, and have massively diverted economists from finding out how the economy works.
McCloskey's book is written for anyone interested in economics, whether trained in it or not--anyone who cares about the economy but is not taken in by the boys' game.
Deirdre McCloskey is University Professor of the Human Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Depends on the audience September 14, 2007
The first half of this book is filled with stories -- McCloskey's gender transformation (she was born Donald), economists she has known or known of (and their copies of Mad Magazine), anecdote-laden advice on the life of a economics professor. Even as an Econ 101 student, I enjoyed this.
Later she gets into more technical analysis, and the current controversies in the field, naming names and taking no prisoners. This is almost readable for a newbie (McCloskey is a witty and concise author) ... but only almost. If you read many academic economics books, I guarantee you will enjoy this one. Otherwise, read the first half or so, then put it down when you start to get bored.
 Read if Interested in What's Wrong with Economics Profession September 5, 2003
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
"Most of the essays in "How to Be Human Though an Economist" were published originally in Deirdre McClosky's regular column in the "Eastern Economic Journal." The material is sophisticated and serious but not technical, and many noneconomists will be able to follow along with difficulty. In a short review, it is impossible to summarize all the essays. In general, the book has to do with the economics profession - what McClosky thinks is wrong with it and how to fix it. Much of the material will be familiar to anyone who has read McClosky's earlier books - "The Rhetoric of Economists" (1985), "The Writing of Economics" (1986), and "The Vices of Economists; The Virtues of the Bourgeoisie" (1997). The essays are grouped loosely around basic suggestions that sounds like those in the latest self-help book: be yourself, be brave, be ethical, write better, read more.""A large section of the book is devoted to McClosky's on-going and largely futile war on "statistical significance." McClosky is not the only critic of how empirical statistical research is conducted, but she is certainly the most vocal one. Every economist who has ever estimated a regression equation should read these essays." -From "The Independent Review," Fall 2002
Great Light Reading on Heavy Topics October 29, 2001
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book is a collection of short articles published previously, all for the generalist economist. McCloskey skewers mainstream economics for its insular habits, woeful statistical techniques, and inability to change. I found all of the essays provocative. The style is chatty and conversational, and as McCloskey has interacted with many of the world's leading economists and Nobel laureates, it makes a great read. Highly recommended.
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