The Flawed Genius of William Playfair

A product of the Scottish Enlightenment, William Playfair (1759–1823) worked as a statistician, economist, engineer, banker, land speculator, scam artist, and political propagandist. It has been claimed – erroneously – that Playfair was a spy for the British government and ran a forging operation to print the paper money of the French Revolution. The Flawed Genius of William Playfair offers a complete account of Playfair’s life, richly contextualized in the economic, political, and cultural hist