McCraw, Thomas K. Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007.

From The New Yorker:

In 1939, the economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote that “the history of capitalism is studded with violent bursts and catastrophes” that, while ultimately bettering society, seem “like a series of explosions.” He called this process “creative destruction,” a phrase that, McCraw writes, aptly describes Schumpeter’s own course. After a series of dramatic turns (including stints as Austrian finance secretary and investment adviser to an Egyptian princess, and a tragic, arguably bigamous marriage), Schumpeter landed in the dubious sanctuary of Harvard (“despicable playground of despicable little tyrants,” he wrote), where he turned out several key texts in twentieth-century political economics. McCraw doesn’t get lost in the baroque details of Schumpeter’s story — how many economists ever fought a duel? — or in the arcana of his theories, achieving a balance that his brilliant and restless subject rarely did in life

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