Peter J. Dougherty
Peter J. Dougherty received his
initial experience as an economics
editor at McGraw Hill, and in 1985
became Basil Blackwell’s first
American editorial director. He went
on to do trade publishing at The Free
Press until 1992, when he joined
Princeton University Press, where he
is now Publisher and Senior
Economics Editor. Dougherty’s list of
published authors includes some of
the world’s most distinguished social
scientists, among them over a half
dozen Nobel prize-winners. He writes
and lectures about social science
publishing and about economic
culture. His articles have appeared in
the Financial Times, The Los Angeles
Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
The American Economic Review, The
Journal of Scholarly Publishing, The
American Sociologist, and elsewhere.
Papers Published in World Economics:
Speaking in Tongues
Over the past half century, a global economic language—a vernacular—has
emerged. This vernacular, like any such language, has formed the foundation of
much of contemporary economic culture across nations, and has facilitated
communication on economics around the world. Two books have served as
particularly rich sources of this economic vernacular, Paul Samuelson’s Economics
(now with William Nordhaus), originally published in 1948, and Robert
Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers, first appearing in 1953. Peter J. Dougherty
traces the history of these two modern classics and their influence—the former
on scientific understanding, the latter on critical perspective—on the millions of
students who passed through economic principles courses in the generations
since the post-war publication of these books.
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