I recently stumbled upon this thoughtful commentary on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations by the late great Ronald Coase. Considering that Coase is one of my intellectual heroes (see here, for example), how did I not discover his beautiful essay earlier? Below is an excerpt:

The Wealth of Nations is a masterpiece. With its interrelated themes, its careful observations on economic life, and its powerful ideas — clearly expressed and beautifully illustrated – it cannot fail to work its magic. But the very richness of the book means that each of us will see it in a somewhat different way. It is not like a multiplication table, or a modern textbook with a few simple messages which, once absorbed, makes a rereading unnecessary. The Wealth of Nations has many ideas from which to choose and many problems to ponder. Though the time may come when we will have nothing more to learn from the Wealth of Nations or, more accurately, when what we would learn would be irrelevant to our problems, that time has not yet been reached, nor will it, in my view, for a long time to come.

Bonus video: Below is Michael Sugrue’s talk on The Wealth of Nations from his 1992 lecture series on “Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition”: