I am duty bound to post this here in the most unlikely of places. Yet no better place can be imagined. Robert Heilbroner wrote a book called the "The Worldly Philosophers" it has been through seven (yes 7!) additions. here is an excerpt from Robert W. Moore's review of the 7th edition, for Amazon: "This is without question one of the finest popular introductions to any subject written in the past several decades. Heilbroner does not intend this as a full-fledged introduction to economics and certainly could never serve as an introduction to the subject in a classroom setting, but it is an exceedingly well-written, highly informed, enormously entertaining first-dip into what Carlyle called "the dismal science." Although Heilbroner does not neglect either historical context or the ideas driving the worldly philosophers, the account is distinguished by great attention to the lives of the leading economists. He is throughout as concerned to have us get to know the men behind the ideas as the ideas themselves. I suspect that part of Heilbroner's motivation in focusing so much on the lives of the great economists is that so many of them were such interesting individuals that their very existences dispel some of the stereotype of economics being dull and dry. Mind you, not even Heilbroner's lively pen can enliven some of these individuals' lives. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Alfred Marshall lived remarkably uneventful lives. But Heilbroner is at his best depicting the marvelously odd friendship of Malthus and Ricardo, the quirks of Saint-Simon and Henry George, the wonderful eccentricity of Thorstein Veblen, and the easy genius of John Maynard Keynes. Not that Heilbroner neglects the ideas. He writes wonderfully about many of the key ideas driving the thought of each of these thinkers, but he neither tries to be exhaustive (he barely touches on the highpoints of Marx, for instance) nor attempt to detach them from the context of particular individuals living at a particular juncture in history. I have to say something about Heilbroner's style. Today, unfortunately, too many scholars simply cannot write. This has always been true to an extent, but fewer and fewer academics seem to foster the ability to write mellifluous sentences. Heilbroner does not belong to their ranks. He resembles fellow scholars such as Lewis Thomas and Simon Schama in his ability to write memorably, cleverly, and clearly. The degree to which this enhances the value of the book as a whole cannot be overemphasized. Finally, because today virtually all talk of economics passes easily into political economy, I should say something about Heilbroner's own point of view. I say "point of view" rather than "bias" simply because the latter is one of--if not THE--most abused terms in the United States today (it is not abused in other countries). Talk of "bias" rather than truth or falsity arose in the early 1970s when many conservatives realized that they had lost the debates of the sixties. Unable to win arguments on a level playing field, conservatives wanting to infiltrate the mass media concocted the plan of redefining discussion of contemporary issues in terms of bias rather than truth. Instead of an idea being discussed in terms of its ultimate rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, the Right (largely in response to the famous Powell memo--just Google "Powell" and "memo"--for a world of resources on this--Lewis Powell, by the way, late in life while still on the Supreme Court came to feel that his position in the memo was mistaken) wanted to change the terms of the debate to the particular points of view of the individuals involved (he said, she said). Part of this involved the invention of the myth of the liberal media. The media, they argued, was biased, it was liberal (though it certainly was not liberal). My point is this: having a point of view does not equate to bias, and even having a bias does not mean that one warps the facts to fit one's position. I do not think that Heilbroner is "biased." But his positions do place him at a particular point on the political spectrum. He is very far to the left. Though not perfect, he thinks the reforms of the New Deal were a very good thing indeed. But he is far more to the left than that: he thinks socialism has much to recommend, but he is a realist in that he believes we are, for good or ill, stuck with a capitalist system. At least for now. Thus we do not find a near worship of the ideas of Adam Smith (though in fact most on the Right who bring up Smith actually are talking about the Vienna School's imaginative recreation of him and not the historical Adam Smith) nor a knee jerk dismissal of Keynes or even Marx. I would, in fact, say that throughout Heilbroner, though a leftist, treats all the major figures rather fairly. Had he in later editions of his book extended his book beyond Schumpeter, who ends the book, to include von Mises, Hayek, Polanyi, Samuelson, Arrow, Friedman, Sen, and others, he might have found some he would have found more (Polanyi, Samuelson, Arrow, and Sen) congenial and others he would have found less (von Mises, Hayek, and Friedman). What I want to emphasize is how balanced Heilbroner is. I heartily recommend this to anyone wanting an introduction to the history of economic thinking. It is hard to find a more successful popular introduction to an intellectual discipline than this. Although first published in the early 1950s, Heilbroner revised it repeatedly during his lifetime, the final time in the late nineties. For a highly readable introduction to the first two hundred years of economic thinking, it can hardly be surpassed." This is the book that every real economist today has read. Many a graduate course in economics has it on its reading list. As a gift to my ET colleagues, I point it out to any with the slightest interest in the discipline of Economics. For those interested in the difference between science and economics go to ~51 minutes into this interview.
Liberals have a tendency of conflating preference (bias) with truth (objective, i.e. logically and empirically verifiable). Claim in the OP that conservatives conspired in the 70s to shift political discussion from "goodness/badness" to "bias" illustrates this tendency well. Either a claim/idea is consistent internally (logic) and externally (observable reality) and becomes a candidate for truth or not ( then it is a bias/preference). Nothing is wrong with having preference, we all do, but passing it as a truth (just because one thinks its a moral good) is a form of lying.
I got the sense the author of the review was a conservative who was criticizing his own movement. (as smug academics are wont to do)
Looks like my library has a few copies of this book. I put it down on reserve and will give it a shot. Lately, I've been going a lot of study into both economics & philosophy.