The world has just learned that Robert Heilbroner, author of the justly famous and best-selling The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, first published in 1953 and still in print, died here in Manhattan last week at age 85.  "Worldly Philosophers," which I read as a teenager and which cemented my fascination with economics, profiles, among others, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, David Ricardo, and Joseph Schumpeter, but the operative word here is "worldly"—what Heilbroner cares about is the impact these men's thoughts have on our everyday lives.  Those he profiles thought large thoughts on a large stage, whereas, to me, far too many of today's economists think crabbed and impoverished thoughts on an intensely mathematically-driven stage:

"The worldly philosophers," Dr. Heilbroner said in a 1999 interview, "thought their task was to model all the complexities of an economic system - the political, the sociological, the psychological, the moral, the historical. And modern economists, au contraire, do not want so complex a vision."

If you haven't read it, a word of advice: Do.