Saving Adam Smith

"If Adam Smith returned to life, would he admire the global capitalist system that honors him or would he be horrified?" "The Wealth of Nations is Smith's most popular work, but Smith himself revered his theory of Moral Sentiments, an unread classic that searches for the wellsprings of human happiness and virtue. There is virtue in markets, yet Adam Smith would have been appalled by a world that holds wealth above human connections, a world of markets unsupported by an underlying moral fabric ... a world like ours." "And so it is in Jonathan B. Wight's Saving Adam Smith, a wondrous imagining in which Adam Smith stands before us today - generous, incisive, committed, and unflinchingly honest. As Smith was a revelation to his contemporaries, so he is to us: a man whose true message - obscured by centuries of misinformation and caricature - has never been more vital for sustaining business and society."--Jacket.