Adam Smith in Plain English is not a tribute, a takedown, or a slogan in book form. It is a careful dismantling of the costume Adam Smith has been forced to wear for over two centuries—and a reconstruction of the thinker who actually wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. This book explains Smith’s ideas in clear, direct language without flattening them into dogma. It shows why Smith began with moral psychology before turning to markets, why he distrusted merchants as much as monarchs, and why he never believed markets could run on self-interest alone. Sympathy, judgment, restraint, and legitimacy are not side themes here; they are the foundations on which Smith built his economic analysis. Readers will discover a Smith who worried about inequality, monopolies, lobbying, intellectual degradation at work, and the moral costs of commercial society. A Smith who supported public education, infrastructure, and taxation. A Smith who condemned slavery and empire while failing to fully grasp their economic centrality. A Smith who believed growth mattered—but who underestimated how power, capital, and environmental limits would reshape it. The book also follows Smith’s long afterlife: how he was narrowed by classical economics, selectively quoted by neoliberal thought, and reduced to a caricature in popular culture. Along the way, it compares Smith’s ideas with those of Rousseau, Marx, Keynes, Hayek, and others—not to crown a winner, but to clarify what Smith actually argued and where his framework still constrains bad thinking today. Written with dry irony and intellectual seriousness, this is a book for readers tired of ideological Adam Smiths—both saint and villain alike. It treats markets as human tools, not moral forces, and economics as inseparable from judgment, power, and institutional design. If you want slogans, this book is not for you. If you want Adam Smith without the costume, it is.
