History everywhere shows us a powerful process of reciprocal action between the social and individual powers and conditions. In the Italian and Hanseatic cities, in Holland and England, in France and America, we find the powers of production, and consequently the wealth of individuals, growing in proportion to the liberties enjoyed, to the degree of perfection of political and social institutions.
-from "The Teachings of History"

One of the most prominent economic philosophers of the 19th century, on a par with-but espousing quite different thinking than-Karl Marx and Adam Smith explores, in the three-volume National System of Political Economy, a reasoned doctrine of national and pan-national management of trade, a global collaboration between government and business.

Volume 1 examines the pronounced influence of freedom prudently balanced with regulation in the economic histories of the nations of Europe and North America. A close reading of this 1841 classic is an absolute necessity for anyone who hopes to understand world economic history of the last 150 years.

German economist and journalist FRIEDRICH LIST (1789-1846) served as professor of administration and politics at the University of Tübingen, but was later jailed and later exiled to America for his political views. His is also the author of Outlines of American Political Economy (1827).