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| Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered | 
 enlarge | Author: E. F. Schumacher
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $8.13
You Save: $5.87 (42%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $4.88
Avg. Customer Rating:  (26 reviews)
Sales Rank: 6645
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0060916303
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.1
EAN: 9780060916305
ASIN: 0060916303
Publication Date: September 27, 1989
Release Date: September 27, 1989
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The classic of common-sense economics. "Enormously broad in scope, pithily weaving together threads from Galbraith and Gandhi, capitalism and Buddhism, science and psychology."-- The New Republic
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Buy this Inspirational book from your locally owned bookstore October 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great book.....If you haven't read it and are considering a purchase, heed the wisdom in the title. Buy local, support small businesses. Amazon will do OK without you buying it from them. Otherwise, you could buy this book from Amazon to be "ironic".
I (Who Have Nothing) October 27, 2008
Put in simple pop culture terms, the argument against Small, is: Imagine a steady rock & roll diet of nothing but local bands. No Berry, no Beatles, No Stones, no Dylan, etc., etc. Except we cannot even imagine that ~ local bands are always recasting, if not outright imitating, the latest sounds from all over the country.
Look, the Dark Ages were "green," too. Who hated industry and technology and science more than the Church? Even a 100 hundred years ago, before traffic jams, pollution, TV commercials and the Bomb, about 70% of this country was illiterate farm hands. With life expectancies of 50 years. But they had great banjo players.
 great insights but the book could nave been better May 22, 2008
This book offers some excellent insights but lacks something that all big picture political/economic books must have - humor. That weakness makes it a long, heavy slog that is nearly worth the time spent.
Classic June 27, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
A bit outdated but given that it was written in the 70s this book is very inspiring ans still very applicable (if not even more applicable today than in the past). In any event it is truly a classic in ecological economics. There are certainly many critics of this book but its significance is immense. I must say that we economists really need to work on our writing abilities because not all of the works are easy to read for non-economist audience. Yet Schumacher manages just that.
Small IS Beautiful! January 26, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I've never been all that interested in macroeconomics, but intrigued by the title, I gave Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher a try. It was a long read, but a good one, and I culled interesting insights from every chapter. Schumacher's visionary simplicity with the largest elements of society were radical 30 years ago, but incredibly relevant, then and today.
A fair portion of the book is spent emphasizing the way our economy is unsustainable and how quickly we use up our natural resources. Schumacher also explains how little consideration was put towards pollution until it was too late. In the folksy way of a 60s radical, he speaks about the importance of the land in a way that is neither hollow nor flippant, but full of wisdom and grace.
"The whole point is to determine what constitutes progress." What is progress? What should aid to the third world look like? These questions are where Schumacher particularly shines, explaining a need for intermediate technologies to improve the quality of life for everyone and not just investments which only improve the quality of life for the highest classes and leave the lower ones even more destitute.
"No system or machinery or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own feet: it is invariably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man's basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose. I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol worship of material possessions, of consumption and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that `what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us.'" wrote Schumacher. What do our economic values say about us?
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