Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich
How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World
- Contents
- Review Quotes

1 Liberalism Liberated
2 It’s the End of the World as They Knew It, and You Should Feel Pretty Good
3 Nostalgia and Pessimism Worsen Poverty
4 Under Liberalism the Formerly Poor Can Flourish Ethically and Spiritually
5 Consider the Possibility That Your Doubts Might Be Mistaken
6 Pessimism Has Been since 1800 a Rotten Predictor
7 Even about the Environment
8 In Fact, None of the Seven Old Pessimisms Makes a Lot of Sense
9 Nor Do the Three New Ones
10 So to Get Better, the World Had Better Keep Its Ethical Wits about It
11 And True Liberalism Celebrates a Life Beyond Wealth
Part II Enrichment Didn’t Come for the Reasons You Imagine
12 Liberal Ideas, Not European Horrors or Heroism, Explain the Great Enrichment
13 Liberalism Supported Innovism and the Profit Test
14 The Great Enrichment Did Not Come from Resources or Railways or Property Rights
15 Nor Thrift or “Capitalism”
16 Schooling and Science Were Not the Fairy Dust
17 It Wasn’t Imperialism
18 Nor Slavery
19 Nor Wage Slavery Ended by Unions and Regulation
Part III It Came Because Ideas, Ethics, Rhetoric, and Ideology Changed
20 The Talk and the Deals Changed in Northwestern Europe
21 That Is, Ethics and Rhetoric Changed
22 “Honest” Shows the Change
23 And “Happiness” Itself Changed
24 The Change in Valuation Showed in English Plays, Poems, and Novels
Part IV The Causes of the Causes Were Not Racial or Ancient
25 Happy Accidents Led to the Revaluation
26 And Then Old Adam Smith Revealed / The Virtues of the Bourgeois Deal
Notes
Index
“At a time when the mood – and reality – of the times is swinging toward state intervention in the economy – and rightly so, given the potentially Hobbesian world to which the combination of market power and pandemic have brought us – it’s all the more important to keep an open mind and take these arguments from economic liberty seriously. . . The sweep of McCloskey’s historical knowledge is such that the book is just a good read (if you like the tone), and a fraction of the length of the [Bourgeois] trilogy!”
"This thought-provoking work is recommended for economics faculty and students, and researchers in economics and history to ‘think differently’ about these respected disciplines.”
Economics and Business: Economics--General Theory and Principles | Economics--History
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