Ask your local bookstore for my new book (co-authored with Grady Klein), or you can order it for just $12 from Amazon.com or B&N. (PS to buyers and bloggers: Please use the links above: at no extra cost to you, a few more pennies go to me instead of Jeff Bezos.)
Update: Volume Two: Macroeconomics came out in Jan 2012!
Scroll down for excerpts, reviews, information for teachers, updates on foreign translations (now available in Japan, Germany, Italy, Korea, Taiwan, and China, 4 more coming!), and corrections.
Comedy/book tour
Details about upcoming shows here, but in general I do gigs year-round if I can fit them into my teaching schedule—so contact me to bring economics comedy to your high school, college, corporate event, or comedy club! If you are with a public high school or community college or otherwise looking for a free show, click here.
Excerpts
Below is one of my favorite chapters! To download it in PDF (plus the front and back covers and Table of Contents), click here. Or you can just download the front and back covers and Table of Contents.
Reviews
From the back cover of the book:
- “Learning economics should be fun. Klein and Bauman make sure that it is.” —N. Gregory Mankiw, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and author of Principles of Economics
- “Hilarity and economics are not often found together, but this book has a lot of both. It also does a great job of explaining important economic concepts simply, accurately, and entertainingly—quite a feat.” —Eric Maskin, Nobel Laureate in Economics
- “Bauman and Klein present solid basic economics in a brilliant cartoon wrapper. The authors successfully shine a happy light on the dismal science.” —Hugo Sonnenschein, Distinguished Service Professor and President Emeritus, University of Chicago
- “This is a seriously funny book! Klein and Bauman offer an enlightening and entertaining look at why our day-to-day choices matter and how they all combine. Students will find this a great addition to their textbooks, and critics of the discipline will learn what economics is really about.” —Diane Coyle, author of The Soulful Science
- “Had Art Spiegelman and John Maynard Keynes collaborated on a comic book on economics, they could only have dreamed of coming up with something this good.” —Jonathan A. Shayne, a.k.a. Merle Hazard, country singer and founder of Shayne & Co., LLC
Reviews on the web (I’ll add more as they cross my desk) include Tim Harford (“For anybody who is genuinely interested in economics, who really wants to learn the jargon, or anyone who is starting out studying an economics course, this is just a brilliant source. It really is rigorous, but it’s also a lot of fun to read.”), Tony Cookson (“my favorite Christmas gift this year”), more from Greg Mankiw (“a painless way to learn economics”), kind words from marginalrevolution’s Tyler Cowen (“the next step in economics education”), a nice review in the Boston Globe (“uproariously funny, practical, and relevant”), another nice review in the Boston Globe (“a warp-speed, entertaining and enlightening journey through the basics”), and a mostly critical review from Bryan Caplan (with responses here and here, including my final 2 cents in the comments section).
Information for teachers
If you ‘re a college or high school instructor looking to adopt the cartoon book(s) for a class and you don’t want to shell out $12 you can click here to get a desk copy (free if you order 20 copies) or an examination copy (just $3 per book :). Send a note on school letterhead to the address in the link and ask for a copy of The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume One: Microeconomics, ISBN 978-0809094813 and/or The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume Two: Macroeconomics, ISBN 978-0809033614.
Also FYI both cartoon books should be available at a steep discount (possibly even free!) as part of a Worth Publishers package deal with intro texts by Krugman/Wells, Cowen/Tabbarok, or Stone. For more info contact Julie Tompkins at jtompkins at bwfpub.com, and if you have any trouble please contact me.
Foreign language translations: Asia
Other translations are coming in 2012 for Indonesia and Thailand.
Click the book covers on the left for links, or follow the bulleted links for more about translations for:
- Korea (also at Kyobobook, Yes24 Libro),
- Taiwan (traditional Chinese)
- China (simplified Chinese), a book I think of as The Cartoon Introduction to Socialism with Chinese Characteristics :) PS. Here’s one of my comedy routines on Youku with Chinese subtitles!
- Japan (also at Amazon Japan), and here’s one of my comedy routines with Japanese subtitles!
Foreign language translations: Europe
Translations are now in bookstores for:
Other translations are coming in 2012 for Polish and French, the latter thanks to the determination and bonhomie of Christophe Bontemps of the Toulouse School of Economics, who suggested the idea and will be doing the translation!
Corrections
- Steve Pratt (a self-described “Father, Husband, Fisherman, Churchgoer, and Economist” from Anchorage, Alaska) writes that there’s a mistake on page 13 (“The metaphor of the invisible hand was coined by Adam Smith in 1776…”) because Adam Smith first mentioned the Invisible Hand in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which dates from 1759. This is absolutely correct, at least if Wikipedia is to be believed.
- The annuity formula on p34 is not wrong, but it would be easier and clearer without the compound fraction, i.e., as (x/r)*etc. If I get a chance to change it in a 2nd edition I will!
What a wonderful teacher you must be, sorry prof. I believe using music or comedy to teach are the most powerful ways to achieving the best outcome. The other day I watched a teacher teaching 8 year olds using a guitar and singing all their tables and sounds, it was amazing the pupils bar none danced and sang all the 12 tables and sounds, if only all teachers has this ability to have children adore their lessons and teacher. But she was an inspiration and happily my future daughter-in-law. I hope to persuade my daughter to buy your book. She has two approaching Economics as a subject. Thank you for being so amazing. Lyn
Hi Yorum,
I am an assistant professor and will probably use your book for my principles classes, except one problem. I teach macro. Are you planning a volume 2? If so, when we it be published. I loved volume 1.
Thanks.
YB: We’re working on it! But it won’t be before 2011…
As an economist, what’s your perspective on Amazon’s fight with the publisher? Does this fit into any standard model for market behavior?
I don’t know much about it, but my sense is that the bottom-line issue is whether Amazon is a grocery store or is more than a grocery store. If they’re a grocery store, then customers can always go to another grocery store and so Amazon shouldn’t be able to win fights like this. If they’re more than a grocery store then they actually have a loyal customer base &etc and maybe they can actually exert force like they’re trying to here. If I had to guess I’d say that they’re a grocery store, but that’s mostly just based on my own personal experience: I buy things from Amazon because they have my address and billing information &etc, but it wouldn’t take much for me to switch to buy.com or bn.com or whoever, and if I really wanted a book then I would switch… and maybe never come back to Amazon. Whether I’m typical or not I don’t know, but ultimately I have a hard time believing that Amazon will continue to be successful if they repeatedly fail to provide goods that people want to buy. Just my two cents though :)
Speaking of microeconomics, you recommend making up the ‘free shipping’ amount with the bamboo spatula.
Care to comment on the pricing?
“Price: $6.15
Also available from other suppliers without the Amazon “free shipping”
5 new from $1.99
Curious how Amazon’s price with free shipping is always those few pennies less than the best total price for buying from anyone else in the world who actually itemizes the cost plus shipping separately.
Care to comment, here or anywhere? Pointer welcome. I thought itemizing and disclosing costs was supposed to be an economic good thing providing more information so people could make better choices.
I am also enjoying the introduction and encourage any others who like the form and level to rush out and purchase it.
I just read this book in one nice big sitting today after my dad got this from the library. GREAT STUFF! :D
Hi…
I’m a Taiwanese, and I read your comic book of micro-economic in Chinese.
It’ really interesting and helpful for me.
I’ll recommend this book to my friends definitely. ^__^
i am really impressed prof, keep it up
Was there a book like this about 10 or 15 years ago? I remember it being on the textbook list; maybe it was “economics coloring book” or something like that, but I kind of think it was cartoons. Thanks
Not that I know of, but let me know if you find something…
how is outsourcing beneficial?
YB: We’ll talk about this a bit in Volume Two…
Great book!!!!! Any news on when the second volume is coming out? :)
YB: Early 2012, knock on wood!
Cool book but you should look up a book called Understanding Economics by Ken Cole (cartoons by Phil Evans) by Pluto Press from about 1994-it alos had cartoons and ws written like a mind map-with very little texl. Its out of print now I think but was popular in UK and I came across it in South Africa also.
I would ask that the book was published in the Hungarian language? I’ve been to several shops in the area, but still could not find it anywhere. Online stores also have looked at (www.konyv-konyvek.hu), but could not find it there either. Planned to prepare the Hungarian-language translation? If so, then what is the timetable?
Jo napot kivanok (that’s pretty much all the Hungarian I remember from my semester abroad in Budapest in 1994 :) Unfortunately we don’t have a Hungarian publisher who is interested in translating the book. If you know a company then please let me know because we would be delighted to publish a Hungarian translation. But we cannot do it by ourselves; we need to partner with a Hungarian publisher. Viszlat, yoram