New Course: 100 Great Books (Book 5: The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith)

Is self-interest selfish?

This is the fifth book of our new course on 100 Great Books. You can read the brief about why the course exists and check out previous editions.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

Imagine Europe in 1776. The Enlightenment had filled the air with speculation about liberty, reason, and progress. Britain was in the early throes of industrialization; factories and trading companies were remaking the landscape faster than political theory could catch up. It was in this atmosphere that a Scottish philosopher named Adam Smith published a five-book treatise that would become one of the defining texts of the modern age: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

P.S. This is our latest essay published in The New Indian Express. It discusses sobremesa, a Spanish word that combines sobre (‘over’) and mesa (‘table’) to capture the lingering hours when conversation outlasts the meal.