A counter to the popular impression that Adam Smith was a champion of selfishness and greed. It shows that the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations maintained that markets served to promote the well-being of the populace and that government must intervene to counteract the negative effects of the pursuit of self-interest.

Introduction: Back to Adam?1Pt. IAdam Smith in His Time1Cosmopolitan Provincial: Smith's Life and Social Milieu152Gentlemen, Consumers, and the Fiscal-Military State283Self-Love and Self-Command: The Intellectual Origins of Smith's Civilizing Project39Pt. IIDesigning the Decent Society4The Market: From Self-Love to Universal Opulence635The Legislator and the Merchant776Social Science as the Anticipation of the Unanticipated847Commercial Humanism: Smith's Civilizing Project938"The Impartial Spectator"1009The Historical and Institutional Foundations of Commercial Society11310The Moral Balance Sheet of Commercial Society13111The Visible Hand of the State14012Applied Policy Analysis: Smith's Sociology of Religion15413"A Small Party": Moral and Political Leadership in Commercial Society164Pt. IIIFrom Smith's Time to Ours14Critics, Friendly and Unfriendly17715Some Unanticipated Consequences of Smith's Rhetoric18516The Timeless and the Timely194Notes206Guide to Further Reading240Acknowledgments262Index265

"A profoundly erudite and timely study."--John Gray, National Review "Muller's great accomplishment in this book is to present a clear, thoughtful, and engaging overview of Adam Smith's thought. He reveals Smith to be a wide-ranging and innovative thinker who formulated a comprehensive social science."--Peter McNamara, The Review of Politics

"Jerry Muller has written an extraordinarily good book on the most quoted and least read of the worldly philosophers."—Robert Heilbroner, Author of The Worldly Philosophers"A good work of intellectual history should exemplify two qualities above all: an imagination that allows the author to 'pass over' into the horizon of his subject in order to see the world as the subject sees it; and a sympathy such as to gain a feel for the world of the subject. . . . Like Adam Smith, his subject, intellectual historian Jerry Muller exemplifies these traits to an exceptional degree."—Michael Novak, First Things

Jerry Muller has written an extraordinarily good book on the most quoted and least read of the worldly philosophers. -- Robert Heilbroner, Author of "The Worldly Philosophers" A good work of intellectual history should exemplify two qualities above all: an imagination that allows the author to 'pass over' into the horizon of his subject in order to see the world as the subject sees it; and a sympathy such as to gain a feel for the world of the subject... Like Adam Smith, his subject, intellectual historian Jerry Muller exemplifies these traits to an exceptional degree. -- Michael Novak, "First Things"