The Rhetoric of Economics has been reviewed by followers of the Austrian school four times to my knowledge, by Tom G. Palmer (1986-1987), by Peter J. Boettke (1988), by William Butos (1987, discussed above), and at much the greatest length by the philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe in the Review of Austrian Economics (1989). If You're So Smart (1990) was reviewed from an Austrian perspective by David Gordon (1991). The reviews by Palmer, Boettke, Butos, and Gordon were not as favorable as my mother would have written. But they engaged the work seriously, the most an author in these days of the paper blizzard can expect.

Among other things, they said that “rhetoric” was a characterization of economics favoring Austrian over conventional neoclassicism. I am beginning to think they are right, as can be seen in chapter 25 here, “The Economy as a Conversation.” The neo-Austrian Don Lavoie has inaugurated a major alliance between economics and hermeneutics (the audience's side of rhetoric; Lavoie 1990a), and the authors in his book give impressive testimony to how an Austrian approach to rhetoric can reinvigorate economics.

To be sure, economists who attack the mainstream, such as these Austrians, tend to overlook the sweet currents of Real Keynesianism or Good Old Chicago, and take as being the whole of neoclassical economics the twiddling reported in the latest “theoretical” piece.