Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944) influenced the attitudes of a generation of Americans on the race issue and established Myrdal as a major critic of American politics and culture. Walter Jackson explores how the Swedish Social Democratic scholar, policymaker, and activist came to shape a consensus on one of America's most explosive public issues.

This study examines the manner in which Gunnar Myrdal's intellectual style left an impact on the shaping of Sweden's welfare state, on race relations in the United States, on post-World War Two economic cooperation in Europe, and on the analysis of Third World economic development.

Nobel Prize winner Gunnar Myrdal is best known for his book "An American Dilemma," a classic study of America's racial problems that was chosen as one of The Modern Library's top 100 nonfiction books of the twentieth century. "The Essential Gunnar Myrdal" covers the full range of Myrdal's writing, much of which has never been published in book form. It includes his early essays on economics, his thoughts on the population explosion, his discussions of the question of value in the social sciences, and excerpts from "Asian Drama," his monumental study of the development of Asia. The newest edition in The New Press's Essential series, the book includes extensive commentary by the editors as well as an introduction by Sissela Bok, who is Myrdal's daughter and author of the acclaimed "Lying and Secrets."

Myrdal described this book as a discussion of three key notions in economic theory: the ideas of value, freedom, and collective house-keeping. It is through these concepts, he charged, that political ideology has been intro-duced into economic theory. This volume continues to be relevant in its emphasis on the problem of objectivity in the social sciences.

This book provides an evaluation of the intellectual development of Gunnar Myrdal, emphasizing his methodology, his beliefs about economics and the role of economists in modern society. It explains how Gunnar Myrdal became an institutional economist and how this perspective influenced his contribution to economic development and attempts to close the gap between rich and poor countries. The main argument of the book is that economists, despite being trained in the orthodox neoclassical tradition, can develop an alternative conception that is more relevant and appropriate for analysis and policy making in developing and transition economies. Much of the discussion focuses on the evolution of Gunnar Myrdal's intellectual development and his contributions to transformation issues in an historical context. Specific issues discussed include political and social problems and transformation policy for Central and Eastern Europe. The Political Economy of Gunnar Myrdal will be welcomed by academics and students researching in the fields of the history of economic thought, comparative economics and economic development.