Robert L. Heilbroner

Author of more than 20 books, Robert Heilbroner (1919–2015) was a respected American historian of economic thought. An outspoken socialist for most of his career – and a highly unconventional thinker in a rather conservative discipline – Heilbroner was never recognized as a prominent economist by his peers, but his historical studies are still widely read and recommended. “The Worldly Philosophers,” for example, is arguably the second bestselling economics text of the 20th century, behind only Paul Samuelson’s university textbook, “Economics.”