For a New West Essays, 1919-1958

This collection of Polanyi's writings addresses his significance for the world today more completely than any other. We encounter him here as an essayist, lecturer, social theorist and above all as an engaged public intellectual. The selection speaks very directly to our own concerns: on economy, history and freedom; on institutionalism as a method; on general economic history; on world crisis and transformation. This really is a Polanyi for our times.
Keith Hart, London School of Economics
 
I am delighted to see the publication of this collection of writings (many unpublished) of Karl Polanyi over a very long period. It is more than welcome. Karl Polanyi is one of a very rare breed - important thinkers who are always intelligent, incisive, and wide-ranging, and who ground their arguments in a deep knowledge of history. Even when one disagrees with him, one has to take his views into account, lest you miss out on a long-term perspective.
 
I personally was profoundly affected by his marvelous book, The Great Transformation, both for its substantive arguments and its epistemological framework. That Polanyi is having a revival today is one of the most encouraging things about the current epoch.
Immanuel Wallerstein, Yale University