Maynard Keynes, who have both become known as measurers, but were really more interested in unmeasurable concepts. It all starts with eccentric Jeremy Bentham who tried to measure happiness, then progresses to his utilitarian followers John Stuart Mill and Thomas Malthus. One problem with counting that became evident from this era was that it gave no solutions or causality, just data. Next he describes the political self-esteem movement started by California politician John Vasconcellos in consultation with his friend Jack Canfield, author of the popular self-esteem self-help book Chicken Soup for the Soul. A lot of Vasconcellous' ideas came from the Esalen Institute in the mountains near Big Sur, where Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs theory was popularized. Boyle then tells the interesting story of Frederick Winslow Taylor and his extremely number-oriented scientific management. He then covers the ethical investing fad, an attempt to measure by more than numbers that itself falls victim to counting irrationality. Next is the story of economist John Maynard Keynes. The chapter on "New Indicators" describes attempts to replace GNP with broader measures such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) that attempt to account for full environmental costs. That index was popularized in a 1994 article in The Atlantic Monthly by Clifford Cobb about his new Redefining Progress think tank. Hazel Henderson's 1981 book Politics for the Solar Age was responsible for sparking the creation of the Air Pollution Index, one of many quality of life measurements that are now proliferating. An interesting point is that such measurements are often most meaningful if created and made by the people who care about them. The next chapter covers the story of Edgar S. Cahn who came up with the time dollar as an outgrowth of his battles with proponents of cost–benefit analysis but more importantly from his desire to make people feel valuable. The initial time dollar projects began in 1987 with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The book ends with a chapter named "The bottom line". Boyle summarizes how the practice of trying to measure everything (which used to go by the name pantometry but is now so common that the word has fallen out of use) can rob us of our humanity. Measuring is very necessary, but so is intuition and storytelling, which can often express points much better than numbers can. He thinks we should try to