Albert O. Hirschman

Dani Rodrik, author of Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy:
This wonderful book offers new insights on a giant of the social sciences. Alacevich places Hirschman’s work in intellectual context and traces its long arc of influence to our day. The book sheds new light not just on Hirschman’s scholarship but also his iconoclasm, deliberate provocativeness, often frustrating focus on the particular rather than the general, and ‘propensity for self-subversion.’ It therefore helps us understand the sharp contrast between the brilliance of Hirschman’s contributions and his outsider status in the academic disciplines he inhabited or trespassed in.

Ira Katznelson, author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time:
The quietly vibrant and open-minded scholarship of Albert O. Hirschman, a mix of modesty and assertiveness about political economy, demography, the history of ideas, democracy and social movements, and analytical theory, deserves this book’s bracing critical engagement. With a sympathetic yet tough-minded disposition, Michele Alacevich thoughtfully assesses the innovative and often inspiring achievements of Hirschman’s field-stretching writings, as well as their lacunae and occasional overstatement. In so doing, his keen appraisal captures not just the range, depth, and verve of the writing but also the urgency of Hirschman’s quest for grounded reform across a considerable range of geography and historical circumstances with an unremitting sense of realism.