The Wealth of Nations: Books 1-5 Hardcover – April 3, 2018

The quality of the binding is OK. It’s good enough to last a long time with careful use by an adult. If you are thinking using it as a high school text book it will probably survive two or three academic years; so again, probably OK.Glad I got it!

Type set is great. Not dumbed down. If you want to read one of the most important seminal books on economics this a pleasure to read.

This is an amazing book! Even if starting off it’s difficult to understand Smith’s language, it’s still worth it at the end.

Hard Cover; An absolute must have in your library!

Since it was written many years ago in the vernacular of its time, it was just too hard to read after about 2 pages.

Nothing need be added nor can be rightly subtracted from the praise already earned by this tome, and by not dividing one’s attention, the intellectual revenue earned by a careful reading will yield personal value multiplied exponentially.

This book is the seminal work it is recognized as for a reason. It’s that good, and if you’re interested in understanding economics this is essential. The book would naturally be a laborious read, old English and current English differ. But the editing errors and mistakes of this edition make what would be difficult far more so. A junior high term paper with this many errors would likely be rejected. I am glad I have it and read it, but shame on the publisher for their laziness and ineptitude.

The bounding structure and the paper quality of this book is not bad. But two things need to be noted. First, lots of editors errors. Second, the contents only lists the "Book 1-Book 5" and with wrong pages. Therefore, take care, there is actually no contents of this book.

My review centres on this specific edition, not the text itself, given that the value of this work is universally known. Also, given that the text itself can be accessed free of charge online, I believe what matters here is the specific edition that is the object of purchase.The only positive I can find in this edition is that it is the complete text in one single book that feels sturdy thanks to its hard covers. But that really is the only thing good I can say about it.The covers are badly printed, with a completely out of focus back cover, and the image on the front cover is not even properly aligned, giving a very amateurish look that embarrasses my bookshelf. It's almost like a someone self-published a book using makeshift tools in his shed.Then my surprise was that there was no preface and absolutely no footnotes. My understanding is that when a work is a couple of centuries old, footnotes and some sort of introduction are needed to at the very least clarify words that have changed in meaning as well as customs and ways of doing things that have changed in our society. What you basically get is the simple text you can get online, not a word more.Then came my other surprise when I started reading. The text is riddled with spelling errors (e.g. "loose" instead of "lose") and all sorts of typos, for some reason favouring the placing of capital letters in random places (e.g. "Secondly, The advantage which...", "there is at this day a village In Scotland").I feel this is a poor edition of a great work. The reason I bought it was that I wanted to read it in book form and not have to read it on an electronic device, but the result has been a disappointment, especially given the high asking price. I bought it because it was the only non-abridged edition I saw on Amazon when searching for the book, but maybe I should have looked longer, as I am sure there are plenty more editions available.