" Adam Smith's America is a fascinating exploration of the politics of political economy. It illuminates how economic ideas have been used and reimagined over two centuries of American history, and is at the same time an important inquiry into political disputes over markets, states, and moral values." --Emma Rothschild, author of An Infinite History: The Story of a Family in France over Three Centuries "Adam Smith was a moral philosopher well aware of the quirks of human psychology. So how is it that in America he wound up as the poster child for a free-market order that rests on false assumptions about human hyperrationality? This fascinating story is very important, very instructive, and has never been told. Glory Liu tells it with great verve and great charm." --J. Bradford DeLong, author of Slouching towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century "Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations has long been a touchstone of American thought, powering conversations about markets and politics alike. Yet its message has been continually reinvented since the eighteenth century.

In this lively reception history, Glory Liu explains how and why Smith turned into such a potent political weapon--and what impact the rewriting of his legacy, largely untethered from the text itself, has had on political economic thought in the United States to this day." --Sophia Rosenfeld, author of Democracy and Truth: A Short History "The import of Adam Smith in America is a hitherto neglected topic for understanding both Smith and the history of the nation. Glory Liu admirably fills this gap, reflecting a great wealth of learning and reaffirming the critical role of Adam Smith and his ideas for our world." --Tyler Cowen, bestselling author of The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream "Adam Smith's journey from Kirkcaldy to Chicago was a long, winding, and fascinating one, as Glory Liu brilliantly demonstrates. Adam Smith's America draws on a vast array of source material to make that rarest of things, a genuinely new contribution to the field." --Dennis C. Rasmussen, author of Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders "Few thinkers have inspired such a tangle of conflicting interpretations as Adam Smith. Glory Liu incisively cuts through this thicket, providing a lucid and engaging tour through more than two hundred years of American writings on political economy.

Adam Smith's America shows that while the meaning of Smith's work remains fraught with ambiguities, his reception reveals much about the ideals and imaginations of his readers." --Angus Burgin, author of The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression "Glory Liu's engaging and thorough study tells an important story that has largely gone untold. Her documentation of the complex and often surprising reception of Adam Smith in American politics and economics from his day to ours will be of interest both to students and to advanced scholars--and indeed to anyone who may have wondered what all the fuss over Smith is all about!" --Ryan Patrick Hanley, author of Our Great Purpose: Adam Smith on Living a Better Life.