Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian

Iain McLean is Official Fellow in Politics, Nuffield College, Oxford, and Professor of Politics, University of Oxford. He is the author of more than 100 papers and 15 books. Iain was born in Edinburgh and educated at the Royal High School and Oxford University. He has worked in Newcastle, (where he was also a county councillor), Warwick, and Oxford and held various visiting professorships overseas. He has been studying devolution and Scottish independence since his postgraduate dissertation on the SNP. He is a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Unlike the other little boys who watched the trains go under Blackford Road bridge, he became an engine-driver (on a narrow-gauge steam railway in Wales). He has co-authored two policy explainer books for Edinburgh University Press: Scotland's Choices: The Referendum and What Happens Afterwards and Legally Married: Love and Law in the UK and the US.

• Foreword Preface: A Scotsman looks at the worldThe life of an absent-minded professorA weak state and a weak churchA non-religious grounding of morals: Smith and the Scottish EnlightenmentMerriment and diversion: Smith on public finance and public choiceThe invisible hand and the helping handThe French and American SmithsAdam Smith today

Throughout his book, the author is concerned with the Scottish context. And he knows it well, achieving an interesting and accessible narrative. All in all, this book is very good reading… it is a book to recommend for general readers and Smith scholars.