Dear Prof McCloskey, I just wanted to let you know how much your memoir, Crossing, impacted my life. Your book was assigned for my feminist philosophy class. You allowed me to consider what it is to be a woman in a new and refreshing way. Thank you so much for allowing me to be an (more…)

Gradually reaching the end of Virtues. I’ve only been at it for nine months! At the end of Chapter 44 you say: “Knight and Merriam are not really undermining Christian orthodoxy and Christian ethics. They are misunderestimating them.” You are not one to misuse words – even the ones you make up. But, did you (more…)

Dear Deirdre. Just finished your book Crossing. Bravo. Just had to say thank you for such a wonderful memoir.

Professor McCloskey, I wanted to send you a quick note of encouragement. This semester I am taking a history of economic thought class here at UNI. We recently were discussing Thorstein Veblen, while researching a paper on him I came across some of your work, specifically The Bourgeois Virtues. I started reading it this week (more…)

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Industrial Revolution (330 pp.) Introduction and Table of Contents only (20 pp.) Note to readers: The February 2009 version is a 100,000-word manuscript, with lots of rough edges. You have some of the front matter and the Introduction, which will give you an idea. The full manuscript is (more…)

From Cengage, Issue 18, Spring 2000 William A. McEachern, Editor Deirdre McCloskey’s Crossing: A Memoir offers an unflinching personal account of her transformation from Donald to Deirdre (University of Chicago Press, $21.45 including shipping from Amazon.com). The book is written in the third person, which allows her to refer to Donald as a “he” before (more…)

John Mackey [photo: Dan Winters] From an article in the New Yorker by Nick Paumgarten, “Does Whole Foods Know What’s Good for You?” Prudentia discovers John Mackey’s book interests: He sits in a recliner, surrounded by stacks of books. He gives them a good working over, marking them with underlinings, highlighter, and Post-its. He is, (more…)

Excerpts from Aretae, January 15, 2010 (author unknown): Kling’s triangle … is back in focus due to my reading of Hayek and McCloskey. One of the most fascinating arguments in the first tenth of Deirdre McCloskey’s new book is her line that Europe conquered the world for 1 reason…. it’s the Romer/Friedman/Moldbug argument, but it’s (more…)