天才群像：资本主义创世纪

    在1998年出版的《美丽心灵》（A Beautiful Mind）中，娜莎凭着小说家对叙述和细节的独到视角，讲述了一位孤独的天才——诺贝尔经济学奖获得者、数学家约翰•纳什的故事。娜莎因此书一举成名：评论界一片赞誉，小说登上畅销书排行榜，此后又改编成轰动一时的电影巨制，罗素•克洛主演，郎•霍华德执导。

    在她的第二部著作《宏图大志：经济天才的故事》中，娜莎从微观视角转向了宏观领域。不过，此书并非传统的经济思想史或一群大人物的俗套传记。实际上，它讲述的是前沿激进、改变全球的重大思想的发展历程——“人类能够驾驭经济需求——掌控物质环境而不是受其支配。”

    In A Beautiful Mind (1998) Sylvia Nasar told, with a novelist's eye for narrative and detail, the tragic tale of a solitary genius, Nobel-prize winning mathematician John Nash. Her reward: critical acclaim and a bestseller that later became a hit movie, starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ron Howard.

    With her second book Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, Nasar shifts from micro to macro. However, this is not a traditional history of economic thought or a conventional string of bios of great men. Rather it is the story of the evolution of a radical, planet-reshaping idea -- "the idea that humanity could turn tables on economic necessity -- mastering rather than being enslaved by material circumstances."

    书中的历史画卷史诗般壮阔：维多利亚女王时期的伦敦，战火肆虐的欧洲，宗主国时期的华盛顿。细节非常鲜活，甚至令人震惊。比如卡尔•马克思的口头禅：“我要歼灭你”；再比如因“创造性毁灭”一语而声名远播的约瑟夫•熊彼得，此君在担任财政部长期间曾坐着马拉马车、载着应召女郎，巡游维也纳，“左拥右抱”；又比如保守派巨匠米尔顿•弗里德曼，当年还只是财政部一名年轻的学究，却为罗斯福政府发明了终极“国家收入征收机器”——代扣所得税。（当时谁能想得到？）与此同时，该书充分展现了一些拗口却又关键的概念的丰富性和复杂性，比如“货币幻觉”（通胀和通缩如何扭曲决策）或生产力作为工薪收入和生活水平主要推动者的作用方式。如果经济学基本原理（Econ 101）也能这么引人入胜该多好啊！

    尽管在讲诉这些传奇时难免有所离题，娜莎从未偏离她的主题：现代经济学在帮助解决约翰•梅纳德•凯恩斯称为“人类政治问题”上所发挥的强大作用——即如何将“经济效率，社会正义和个人自由”结合起来。如果好莱坞再次发出片约，无疑需要大卫•里恩（英国大师级导演，擅长拍摄场面宏大的历史纪实片——译注）出马，调集数千人的强大演员阵容，才能巨细靡遗地打造出一部振奋人心的宏大史诗。

    译者：清远

    The canvas is epic: Victorian London, war-shattered Europe, imperial Washington. The details are fresh, at times startling: Karl Marx deploying his favorite conversation starter, "I am going to annihilate you"; Joseph Schumpeter, he of "creative destruction" fame, riding around Vienna as finance minister in a horse-drawn carriage "with a call girl or two on his arm"; conservative icon Milton Friedman as a young Treasury wonk-on-the-make inventing for FDR that ultimate postwar "revenue-raising machine" -- the withholding tax. (Who knew?) At the same time, gnarly but critical concepts, such as the "money illusion" (how inflation and deflation distort decision-making) or the way productivity serves as the primary driver of wages and living standards, shine through in all their richness and complexity. If only Econ 101 had been this interesting!

    Despite some inevitable wandering as her saga rushes on, Nasar never loses sight of her central theme: the powerful role modern economics has played in helping to solve what John Maynard Keynes called "the political problem of mankind" -- how to combine "economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty." If Hollywood comes knocking this time round, it will take a David Lean, orchestrating a cast of thousands, to capture the epic -- and ultimately deeply uplifting -- sweep of the action.