Home in the World

Nobel Prize–winning economist Sen (Harvard Univ.; Collective Choice and Social Welfare) shares in this memoir the rich and varied professional life that has allowed him to work across the globe and interact with some of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th and 21st centuries. His memories range from his childhood under the British Raj in Dhaka, to school days in Santiniketan at the uniquely progressive school begun by Rabindranath Tagore. Just after World War II, he began his undergraduate degree at Presidency College in Calcutta. While there, he weathered a frightening bout of oral cancer which was treated by high doses of radiation. An exemplary scholar, he continued his studies in economics and philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Having witnessed a famine that killed millions of people in Bengal in 1943, he went on to spend much of his career studying how economic ideas impact the marginalized. His career has taken him not only to Cambridge, but also to Oxford, MIT, Harvard, and Stanford; along the way, he has met and conversed with many well-known academics, including the parents of Kamala Harris.