I think that sometimes, we’re over-analyzing and under-synthesizing. We’re reading all these complicated books, finding advanced psychological explanations or statistical correlations. Sometimes old truths just need a dead simple but inspirational explanation to be interesting and valuable.
On some trip I went on a while back I bought a book in the airport bookstore. The book was called “The Undercover Economist”, and I read maybe half of it, and I just started reading the other half this morning. I found it interesting, even though it really didn’t present any new information that I didn’t know. It’s a very basic book, explaining economics and markets. So why did I keep reading?
I simply kept reading because it was interesting and fun. In college, I never found economics particularly interesting or fun, even though I thought so out in the real world. Today I blame that on boring books and teachers. I know now that economics are cool, because they’re an integral part of our reality. Like physics. But this book was interesting. Just because of the way the included information was synthesized.
I guess my point is that explaining something in an interesting way is so much more important than we’re giving it credit for. We need more rockstars in the educational system. Could that be a new frontier for advertisers?
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I have also started to read that very same book and just like Walter I bought it in an airport. The reason it stopped reading it however was because I found it too simple and was disappointed as I realised that it did not provide anything that I (and a lot of other people I suppose) did not already know. I must say that I felt lured into buying a book which on the face appears to be a new “Freakonomics” or “Fastfood Nation” but in fact just free rides on the popularity of those books by calling some simple economic concepts without (in my opinion) any added value “The Undercover Economist”. This being said, I do agree with Walter that it may be educative and therefore suitable as an introduction to economics for those who are unfamiliar with the basic concepts or for those who want to brush up their knowledge on the subject after that basic economics course they took a few years ago. Hence, I might actually finish the book some day…
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Steven D. Levitt (author of Freakonomics) calling the book “Required reading” on the cover feels somewhat dishonest, unless he means for those without basic understanding of economics.
I still think that the book has a good educational form though, and I highly recommend it for those who wish to gather a basic understanding of markets.
For those expecting a new “The Long Tail”, this book will inevitably be a dissapointment.
Ah, those famous economists scratching each other’s backs…