The 250th-anniversary edition of the influential treatise on social responsibility that has shaped leaders from Bill Gates to Barack Obama Best known for his revolutionary free-market economics treatise "The Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith was first and foremost a moral philosopher. In his first book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," he investigated the flip side of economic self-interest: the interest of the greater good. Smith's classic work advances ideas about conscience, moral judgment, and virtue that have taken on renewed importance in business and politics.