Peart, S.J. and D.M. Levy. The Vanity of the Philosopher (Book Review‪)‬

Peart, S.J. and D.M. Levy. The Vanity of the Philosopher. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. Pp. xvi + 323. ISBN 0 472 11496 4. US$40.00. Sandra Peart's and David Levy's The Vanity of the Philosopher (2005) may be interpreted as the latest product of a research project that first crystallised with Levy's How the Dismal Science got its Name: Classical Economics and the Ur-text of Racial Politics (2001) and that Peart and Levy subsequently promoted on www.econlib.org under the title of The Secret History of Dismal Science (2001-2). The two authors further developed this research project in papers delivered before the numerous societies that our North American colleagues are inclined to attend (and the usual institutional suspects may be rounded up here), as well as in articles published in most of the chief outlets devoted to our sub-discipline, such as JHET, EJPE, EJHET, HOPE and JEM. It is, indeed, an understatement to assert that Peart and Levy have ridden this research project hard, and, given the bewildering number of related documents that these authors have since posted to various web-pages, it seems likely that they will push its (tiring?) legs a little further. It is also apparent from the way in which this research has unfolded--which itself reflects the tremendous changes that have recently taken place in the way academics disseminate their ideas--that a number of the chapters that constitute the book under review have already appeared in the public arena. Readers of The Vanity of the Philosopher should therefore be warned that they are likely to come across passages that they have previously perused in different forms and forums. They should also be prepared for the kind of repetition and the occasional breaks in narrative rhythm that usually arise when a number of stand-alone essays are laced together within the stiff boards of a book.