During the progressive era, academia hastily adopted the inhumane pseudoscience of eugenics, and its results on the world were devastating. The influence of the Boston Brahmins in New England can explain the fervent adoption of this malignant belief.
Scholars’ tendency to read the great economist through the lens of their own philosophical and political commitments is neither unexpected nor helpful. One book helps us identify some of those biases and also something closer to Smith’s true legacy.