Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism

"Once and for all, let’s bury the myth of Adam Smith. The Scottish economist who first wrote of “the invisible hand” was no free market fundamentalist. In fact, Smith also authored some of the keenest critiques of capitalism. How did we so badly garble his legacy? In Adam Smith’s America, Glory M. Liu reveals the American mythmaking machine at work. She traces the brazen misreadings that flattened this Enlightenment intellectual into a neoliberal folk hero. It’s a history of a fantasy – a parable about America’s talents for inventing heroes and dodging inconvenient truths."