Situating the German-born economist Albert O. Hirschman has never been easy. He made significant — in some cases, exceptional — scholarly contributions in a half-dozen fields ranging from development economics to international relations and from political theory to social science methodology and statistics. He did important applied work in the field, particularly in Latin America, and labored hard to build institutions and networks supportive of democratic development in both Latin America and other parts of the world. He lived a long, amazingly busy, and crowded life, which ended not with a bang but a whimper and, alas, with more than a touch of professional disappointment. We have long known a good deal about aspects, episodes, and periods of Hirschman's life, but no one had ever connected the dots, much less made sense of their patterning. With the publication of Jeremy Adelman's monumental biography, Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O....
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