Volume 9, No. 4 (Winter 2006)
For those who know little or nothing about the subject the book is likely to be informative but also to be a source of misinformation, particularly for those who know something about one school and are seeking enlightenment on the other. So Chicagoans seeking knowledge about the Austrians will get a lot of useful information about the history of the Austrian School and its development, but nothing about the subtleties of its investigative method or misgivings toward the mainstream way of doing things. In particular the Chicagoan is likely to come away from the book having his prejudices about the Austrian School as being “scientifically soft” reinforced. On the other hand, the Austrian seeking guidance into the Chicago School is also likely to get a lot of useful historical information, but to have his prejudice of the Chicago School as a bunch of naïve, technically proficient philistines reinforced. Neither view is, of course, the truth. Given that few Chicago-types, or any “mainstream”-types are likely to read this book, I imagine that it will be mostly Austrians (and other heterodox-types) who will read it, and they are unlikely to really learn much about the subtleties of the Chicago-method from it.
