Shelf Life.(four books on politics, society, religion)(Brief Article)

Mark Skousen is a learned economist who recently accepted the post of president of the Foundation for Economic Education. It need not be asked by what economic principles is he guided. FEE, as it is universally referred to, was founded in 1946 by the late Leonard Reed and can remark about itself that it is "America's oldest free-market organization." Skousen has written a lot of highbrow books, including Playing the Price Controls Game, The Structure of Production, and The Investor's Bible: Mark Skousen's Principles of Investment.

The news in this quarter is that his book, The Making of Modern Economics, is a reference bible. It is organized around themes, the first -- appropriately -- entitled "It All Started with Adam [Smith!]." He walks the reader through chapters in Malthus, Ricardo, Mill, Marx, Mises. The eighth chapter is on "Marshalling the Troops: Scientific Economics Comes of Age." On through Chapter 13: "The Keynes Mutiny: Capitalism Faces Its Greatest Challenge." He celebrates the other "Milton's Paradise: Friedman Leads a Monetary Counterrevolution," and ends with "Dr. Smith Goes to Washington: The Triumph of Market Economics."

What is especially fine about the book is not only its scope but its organization. Every page has bold-faced subheads giving the curious reader a handy and authoritative definition of what it is, in the not- so-long history of economic thought, he might want to learn about, or remind himself of. The text under the heading "The First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economy" ends three paragraphs later with the sentence, "Let's look more closely at the lives and ideas of three economic wizards, Walras, Pareto, and Edgeworth, who founded the branch of welfare economics."

On very short acquaintance with this book I've formed an attachment to it, and it will sit on my reference shelf, awaiting a final chapter: "The End of Socialist Superstitions." What an absolutely ideal gift for college students. It is available through Amazon.com and is published by M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y.

-- WFB

'Living during the decline of the West -- and being much aware of it -- is not at all that hopeless and terrible," writes historian John LuLukacs: It's not a bad summary of his charming worldview. His new book, At the End of an Age (Yale, 230 pp., $22.95), is intended as a summa of Lukacs's life as a writer of history. The book is not an autobiography but a series of reflections on the theory of knowledge, both scientific and historical.

Lukacs believes that we have reached the end of the modern era in epistemology, and should prepare to move from its very particular brand of objectivity toward a new and modest anthropocentrism: "Contrary to all accepted ideas we must now, at the end of an Age, recognize that we, and our earth, are at the center of our universe. We did not create the universe. But the universe is our invention; and, as are all human and mental inventions, time-bound, relative, and potentially fallible." Lukacs's brand of Christian theology is basically ...