The readers will find evidence that the history of economic though as a body of knowledge is not settled that although there are many areas of consensus the field is also home to numerous controversies and open questions. This is perhaps even more apparent when one compares essays that overlap in terms of coverage. Different authors may have surprisingly different ideas about the central themes or the most significant ideas of a particular school national tradition or time period. A comparison of the several contributions dealing with aspects of or contributors to classical economics will amply illustrate this point.