"Thorstein Veblen's analysis of America's parasitic upper class, which plunders its wealth from productive workers, is widely attributed to his outsider status. But Charles Camic shows that Veblen's ideas did not derive from social marginality. Veblen was a professional economist whose fierce...

"Albert O. Hirschman was not, by any standard, a typical scholar. German by birth, by age thirty he had fought in two world wars, lived in seven different countries on three continents. He spoke and wrote in five languages, used multiple pseudonyms, and could pass as a French native. He held...