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Dr. West brings to life Adam Smith's first years in the bustling Scottish seaport of Kirkcaldy. We follow young Smith as a student, watch his thought develop as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, and enjoy with him the hospitality of David Hume, the Parisian literary salons, Johnson, Burke, Gibbon, and other giants of the era. This brief, readable biography also includes an excellent summary of The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

"Adam Smith's political economy, as we shall endeavor to show, has meaning for all times, and indeed in many ways even the modern era has not yet caught up with it."
– E. G. West, in his Prefatory Note.

Edwin G. West

Edwin George West (1922-2001) - Professor Emeritus of Economics at Carleton University, Ottawa.

Eddy West broke into academic publication in 1964 and 1965 with two articles, "Private vs. Public Education: a classical economic dispute", in the Journal of Political Economy, and "Tom Paine's Voucher System for Public Education", in the Southern Economic Journal. He spent much of the rest of his career elaborating on the problems of government monopoly in education, and on analysis of various methods for having students pay for education, and professors be paid for teaching and research.

His interests were wider than the structure of the educational system, but they always fell within a domain dependent on the spirit of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. He argued relentlessly for the virtues of competitive markets over government agency with its inefficient monopolistic and motivational failures.

Professor West was a visiting professor at Berkeley, Virginia Polytechnical Institute, Emory University, and the University of Chicago. He was a member of several advisory or editorial boards of independent economic institutes around the world, including the Board of Research Advisors of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies.