This book on Joan Robinson traces a path between classical biography and anthropology of science. It illustrates an economist’s scientific and professional progress as the result of a complex of external circumstances, environment, personal relations, and temperamental characteristics. The authors have concentrated in particular on reconstructing the process through which Robinson —abandoning the marginal role of “faculty wife” or “wife of Austin Robinson,” which had been hers at the end of the 1920s—eventually held a position among the major exponents of “Cambridge economics” in the early 1930s. To account for what appears to be an unprecedented professional advance, Aslanbeigui and Oakes chose—as they explicitly assert in their work—an approach departing radically from the lines followed by other biographers. They do not, in fact, set about reconstructing the intellectual biography of Joan Robinson, which would in itself amply suffice to account for this extraordinary academic escalation (see, for example, Pasinetti Reference Pasinetti2007), but focus their attention on analyzing the interpersonal relations that Robinson entered into with the other economists living and working in Cambridge in those years, together with the external historical circumstances in which she worked and with her own personal characteristics.

The authors examine these aspects on the evidence of a vast mass of archival material, showing impressive meticulousness and thoroughness, but following a very particular perspective, guided by a thesis that seems not so much to emerge from objective perusal of the papers as to have been there from the very outset. The authors’ thesis is that Joan Robinson was singularly adept in the strategy of building a career (her husband Austin’s to begin with), showing uncommon ability and promptitude in turning to her own advantage both the collaboration of her closest friends and mentors, and the criticisms of her adversaries. The authors start from two objective factors that characterized the university environment at Cambridge, and, in particular, that of the economists between the 1920s and 1930s: the difficulty to penetrate an élite constructed on local intellectual foundations; Cambridge “parochialism,” as Pasinetti put it (Pasinetti Reference Pasinetti2007, p. 101); and the formidable barriers standing in the way of women, discriminated against as students and academics in favor of men due to prejudices (not even Marshall was immune) about their alleged intellectual inferiority. They then go on to the task of reconstruction with the aim of demonstrating the determination and great tactical flair shown by Robinson in finding her way around both obstacles, in the space of just a few years overturning her very considerable initial disadvantage in terms of isolation and marginalization, and transforming it into opportunities that exceeded all expectations. The authors examine every stage they discern in the process, from her marriage with Austin Robinson to her relationship with Richard Kahn, going through “courting” with Keynes and friendship with Sraffa, seeking to highlight the causal link between her self-image as economist (and as “Cambridge economist” in particular) from the beginning of the 1930s and her subsequent behavior in pursuing professional success in the broad sense. From the point of view of the history of science, the authors’ exercise is certainly interesting and original, bringing light to bear on various aspects, details, and circumstances that may have received relatively little attention in the literature, which previously had concentrated solely on Robinson’s scientific contribution to the work of the Cambridge ‘school.’ The complexity and profundity of her intellectual and personal companionship with Richard Kahn emerges vividly from the authors’ analysis, but at the same time it appears rather too one-way, failing to account sufficiently for the fact that many of the innovative ideas on imperfect competition, for example, are clearly attributable to Robinson herself (see Rosselli Reference Rosselli, Marcuzzo and Rosselli2005, pp. 262–263).

Basically, what disturbs readers sympathetic to Joan Robinson and appreciative of her intellectual qualities is precisely the reductio she is subjected to, ultimately and inevitably casting her in the role of a scheming, self-interested woman. It is a picture that contrasts all too much with the Joan Robinson familiar to us all as unconventional, anti-conformist, somewhat argumentative and instinctive, but sincerely dedicated to her research interests—characteristics that must have made it more difficult for her to be accepted in the academic world of Cambridge, in particular by the more traditionalist male components (consider, for example, her awkward relations with Fay and Robertson when she held her course on monetary theory in 1935; see Naldi Reference Naldi, Marcuzzo and Rosselli2005, pp. 339–341). If Robinson had really been motivated by self-interest in her academic and professional choices, would it not have been more logical for her to adopt a different attitude, less polemical and aggressive, avoiding head-on challenge of the rules of the Cambridge tradition? Another point that disturbs the reader is the way in which perfectly legitimate professional aspirations are interpreted negatively as overweening ambition. Reducing her espousal of Keynesianism to a purely tactical move to edge into an academic position at Cambridge really does seem to clash with the truly profound reasons for her convictions in this field, consistently pursued throughout her life. Finally, in reconstructing the genesis of the book The Economics of Imperfect Competition (1933) and the early stages of her career, to insinuate—as do the authors—that Robinson wittingly and ably exploited the collaboration and helpfulness of Kahn (in primis), but also contributions by Shove and Sraffa (not to mention the protection of Keynes later on), means not only offering a representation that hardly does justice to this economist’s scholarly skills but, even worse, failing to understand what Cambridge was really like in those years, the way theoretical advances were achieved as the fruit of group work, or, at any rate, of a meeting of minds through contribution and comparison. Suffice it to take any work of those years published by any of the major authors involved to see the sheer quantity of reciprocal acknowledgments and interrelating influences. Robertson’s book Banking Policy and the Price Level (1926) was the result of long discussions with Keynes, echoes of which are amply attested in the Treatise on Money (1930), which in turn clearly contains ideas and leads taken up from Robertson. Another example, perhaps not so well known but equally apt, is to be seen in the idea of commodity buffer stocks, which first appeared in the book by Robertson (Reference Robertson1926) and was later taken up by Keynes (Reference Keynes1938, Reference Keynes and Moggridge1942). The General Theory would probably not have been everything it was if it had not been for contributions, in the first place by Kahn (see Marcuzzo Reference Marcuzzo2002, pp. 442–444), but also by other members of the famous Cambridge Circus. So, what are we to conclude from all this? Are we to see all these economists as so many expert strategists who ‘exploited’ their colleagues’ contributions to forge ahead in their careers?

Finally, appreciable as the book certainly is for its use of sources and historical reconstruction of environments and personal relations, it could have been distinctly better had it not started from an initial bias. One cannot help wondering whether the various stages in her career might not have been viewed in less maliciously searching light had Robinson been born a man.