You Should Read This (#7): Small is Beautiful
Economics As If People Mattered
In 1973 economist E. F. Schumacher wrote a passionate plea to end excessive consumption. Half a century on his book is as relevant – if not more so – as it was then. Richard Atherton and Tom van der Lubbe review his book Small is Beautiful. How can we apply his message in this day and age?
Small Is Beautiful is Oxford-trained economist E. F. Schumacher’s classic call for the end of excessive consumption.
Human cost
Named one of the Times Literary Supplement’s 100 Most Influential Books Since World War II, Small Is Beautiful presents eminently logical arguments for building our economies around the needs of communities, not corporations. The New York Times calls Small is Beautiful ’the book that changed the way many people think about bigness and its human cost’.
Schumacher inspired such movements as ‘Buy Locally’ and ‘Fair Trade,” while voicing strong opposition to ‘casino capitalism’ and wasteful corporate behemoths.
About the author
Born in Germany, Dr. E. F. Schumacher (1911–1977) fled to England after the rise of Nazism and, with the help of John Maynard Keynes, taught economics at Oxford University.
Source: Harper Collins Publishers