The Lily
This is Professor Cloud’s first major work but it follows on a lifetime of exciting experience in the two very different worlds of capitalist speculation in emerging markets and the stayed and static world of academia. He brings the two together to urge intellectuals to learn from the experience of real-world markets, and for market participants to gain more confidence over their primary role of embracing a changing and developing society. To this end, he uses many tools from economic science to biological metaphors to the philosophy of society from the ancient world to modern times.
The prose style is like nothing you’ve seen from a thinker of his calibre. It is rhapsodic, imaginative, and poetic. His erudition is often startling. His vision is refreshing and new. You can’t escape the feeling that he is put his finger on something very important, very profound. Here he acts as our teacher to help us learn to love and appreciate the very point about freedom that most people have considered regrettable. He teaches us to love what we do not know
