A Guide For the Perplexed

A reissue of EF Schumacher's classic work on the fundamental place and purpose of philosophy to celebrate the centenary of his birth.

A condensation of a vast and refreshingly unorthodox system of ideas

Schumacher's arguments are invigorating, provoking, and often dramatic

The most exciting philosophical book for ages

There is a rich store of wisdom and understanding, embedded in the religions of East and West, which our dangerous preoccupation with science has scanted and ignored... This book is about the different ways in which people may see and the blindness of only seeing in one particular way.

Before the publication of Small is Beautiful, his bestselling reappraisal of Western economic attitudes, Dr E. F. Schumacher was already well known as an economist, journalist and progressive entrepreneur. Born in Germany, he first came to England in 1930 as a Rhodes Scholar to study economics at New College, Oxford. Later, at the age of twenty-two, he taught economics at Columbia University, New York. As he found theorising without practical experience unsatisfying, he then went into business, farming and journalism. He resumed the academic life for a period at Oxford during the war, afterwards serving as Economic Adviser to the British Control Commission in Germany from 1946 to 1950. In later years, his advice on problems of rural development was sought by many overseas governments. Dr Schumacher was awarded the CBE in 1974. He died in 1977.

A Guide for the Perplexed is E. F. Schumacher's classic work of philosophy and a statement of the philosophies that underpin his economic masterpiece Small is Beautiful. Schumacher asserts that it is the task of philosophy to provide a map of life and knowledge, which exhibits the most important features of life in their proper prominence.

E F Schumacher

A book of heart and hope and downright common sense about the future.

A Study of Economics as if People Mattered

How does our economic system impact the way we live? Does it really affect what we truly care about? 
 
Oxford economist E. F. Schumacher provides an enlightening study of our economic system and its purpose, challenging the current state of excessive consumption in our society. Offering a crucial message for the modern world struggling to balance economic growth with the human costs of globalisation, Small Is Beautiful puts forward the revolutionary yet viable case for building our economies around the needs of communities, not corporations. 
 
‘One of the 100 most influential books published since World War II’ The Times Literary Supplement

E F Schumacher

Praise for Small Is Beautiful

A book of heart and hope and downright common sense about the future.

Books by E F Schumacher

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