ABSTRACT
The opening chapter gives an account of Daly’s early life in Texas which, when he was born in 1938, was a segregated state. It describes seminal events in his childhood such as the loss of an arm due to polio and the mind-broadening experience of working in his father’s hardware store. As a child Daly was given a great deal of free, unsupervised time. He taught himself to swim in the sea from a book which, in retrospect, was not very safe for a one-armed swimmer. Daly was brought up as a Protestant under the influence of his mother though his father was a Catholic. He did very well at school in all subjects except mathematics where he suffered from poor teaching. On turning 18 Daly drove with a friend deep into Mexico where he saw the ruins of pre-Columbian civilizations. The trip changed his view of Mexico and Mexicans forever.
The chapter closes with an account of his time at Rice University and his first exposure to economics where he made the error of thinking that economics was grounded in science and the humanities. It became his life’s mission to make it so.
