The Afterlife of Adam Smith: The Influence, Interpretation and Misinterpretation of His Economic Philosophy, 1760s-2010s

Mark Twain once quipped that a "classic [is] something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." This definition fits Adam Smith's timeless work The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776 on the eve of the American Revolution. For more than two centuries, partisans and pundits across the political spectrum have selectively quoted (or purported to quote) Smith's masterpiece of economic theory in support of legislative agendas and public policy.

Smith himself would have been...