The world is full of people who wish they had read The Wealth of Nations, though it is a sprawling, elephantine book that few people find themselves able to stick with beyond the first chapters, which fewer still actually finish, and which even fewer, probably, understand.
What I have tried to do in The Condensed Wealth of Nations (full PDF) is to boil down the 900-odd pages of Adam Smith’s original into just 80 pages. I have not tried to use Adam Smith’s own words, and simply abridge them, firstly because Smith’s language is very eighteenth-century and flowery, and secondly because he uses terms that have changed their meaning today, or which do not match up with our modern language of economics. Rather, I have put his thoughts into my own words. I have tried to capture some of the flavour of the original, however, using some of the contemporary examples he uses, for example, and just the occasional word or phrase that reminds us of the man and his time. Unlike an abridgement, that has allowed me to encapsulate Smith’s principal thoughts in straightforward language and in a short space.
The work is intended to read as if a modern Smith is giving a précis of his own arguments. And I have tried to follow the outline of the book and the outline of those arguments closely, so that you get a complete picture of what Smith actually said in The Wealth of Nations.