“As is true for many authors in the social sciences, and as I conceded in an extended interview not long ago, my books have often been written in order to prove someone else to be—or to have been—wrong… But matters worked out quite differently for The Passions and the Interests. This book was not written against anyone or against any intellectual tradition in particular. Neither espousing nor opposing any existing body of thought, it has the special quality of standing free and of evolving freely and independently,” wrote Albert Hirschman, rather coyly, in the preface to the twentieth anniversary edition Read more