Famous as a popularizer and expositor, Professor Heilbroner of the New School is also a stimulating original thinker and analyst. The latter gifts dominate in this book, which links together papers on Adam Smith, Joseph Schumpeter and several other large subjects with the fairly simple but subtle point that in the market system "the same underlying processes that assure discipline and order as those of older societies continue to exert their force." In other words, a combination of power and society's implicit views about acceptable behavior shape the economic system from "behind the veil."
