This new edition of The Life of Adam Smith remains the only book to give a full account of Smith's life whilst also placing his work into the context of his life and times.
What makes the second edition of The Life of Adam Smith remarkable is that it strives to be two things simultaneously. First, it remains an intellectual biography, following Smith's life year by year and connecting published observations to actual events...The second aim of the book is to absorb the new scholarship into Ross's old narrative...This intellectual biography is as much intellectual as it is biography; it is built on textual scholarship as well as historical narrative.