The essayists in this volume are united in their deep dissatisfaction with neoclassical economics and the dominance of the market as they explore alternative approaches to economics in its social and cultural context. Their essays cover a broad range of ideas and schools of thought from the European cultural-historical approach, reflected in the work of Karl Planyi and Fernand Braudel, to the "human economy" school in the United States and the "green" view of economic development, with roots in Northern Europe. The concluding essay reaches beyond economics to project a "new heresy" in the respiritualization of society.

Provocative in their dissent from conventional economic thinking, these essays offer food for thought to all who seek alternatives to rampant globalization, accelerating environmental destruction, and a growing ocean of poverty and alienation dotted with islands of unsustainable affluence.