Comments on Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism, by Glory Liu, Princeton University Press, 2022
This short piece is a review and commentary of a new book by Harvard professor, Glory Liu, titled Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism. The book has great merit, which will be discussed below. Unfortunately, it must be stated that there is a great weakness in the book, and it is not so much in what Ms. Liu says, but what she leaves out. What Ms. Liu presents is essentially a case study of one topic—the way in which Adam Smith and his writings have been interpreted and used, and then re-interpreted and re-used over and over again by various political factions over the last 200-plus years. Although extremely thorough in examining this subject, the book never ventures into the realm of the real world. The subject matter remains in the arena of academic debate and never dares to examine, for example, the reality of the 19th and 20th century British Empire. More on this will be discussed in the concluding section of this review.
