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Shortly before the Second World War, a woman who had never accepted her orphan status, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, nicknamed ‘Little Coco’ by her father and known as ‘Coco’ to her relatives, became the first women in history to build a world-class industrial empire. By 1935, Coco, a fashion designer and industry captain, was employing more than 4,000 workers and had sold more than 28,000 dresses, tailored jackets and women's suits. Born into a poor family and raised in an orphanage, she enjoyed an intense social life in Paris in the 1920s, rubbing shoulders with artists, creators and the rising stars of her time.

Thanks to her entrepreneurial skills, she was able to innovate in her methods and in her trendsetting approach to fashion design and promotion. Coco Chanel was committed and creative, had the soul of an entrepreneur and went on to become a world leader in a brand new sector combining fashion, accessories and perfumes that she would help shape. By the end of her life, she had redefined French elegance and revolutionized the way people dressed.

A review essay on Kenneth E. Carpenter’s, The Dissemination of the Wealth of Nations in French and in France, 1776–1843. Published for The Bibliographical Society of America. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2003. Pp. LXIII, 255. $45.00. The Wealth of Nations is bipolar work: on the one hand it is an important philosophical treatise; on the other, it is the founding text of the discipline of economics. This characteristic gives it a unique place among the “great books” of western culture. How did a book, written over two centuries ago by a pedantic, idiosyncratic college professor come to achieve this lofty status? Although nowhere explicitly stated by the author of the work under review, this question serves as a lightning rod for his bibliographic efforts. The focus bestowed on France is justified because the reception of The Wealth of Nations (hereafter, WN) in France mirrored, in most important aspects, its reception throughout Europe. Nevertheless, the opaqueness of this book’s title masks its most fascinating feature, namely, the manner in which Carpenter unfolds the complicated answer to this central question.

This chapter focuses on the international development plans implemented in Colombia during the regime of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953–1957). It argues that foreign economists and international agencies, such as the World Bank, played a significant role in supporting and strengthening local leaders opposing the regime. By analyzing the creation of the Cauca Valley Corporation in 1955, through the intervention of the former chair of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) David Lilienthal, this study provides two main contributions to the literature on economists and political economy under authoritarian rule. Firstly, it illuminates how local groups mobilized international economists to contrast Rojas. Secondly, it analyses the evolving relationship between World Bank advisors, David Lilienthal, and the regime. After describing the consolidation of political and economic interest groups and their global connections before Rojas coup d’état, it focuses on Rojas’ regime and on how it affected the implementation of the World Bank development started with the General Survey Mission in 1949. In the Cauca Department, local leaders invoked the World Bank and Lilienthal to implement a TVA model in opposition with the central government.

No longer do resource economists merely regard nature as a collection of inert materials to be improved by human labor and manufactured capital; rather, nature is, to an increasing extent, taken to be a mindless producer of economically valuable ecosystem goods and services. Instances of natural capital are frequently said to produce such goods and services in a manner that is relatively detached from human agency. This article argues that, historically, the idea of nature as a systematic original producer capable of self-generation is hardly novel. The eighteenth-century roots of this idea can be found in the writings of Carl Linnaeus who depicted the whole Earth and all of its productions as the “oeconomy of nature.”