A Higher Call

Posted on July 31, 2013 by smellincoffee

A Higher Call
© 2012 Adam Makos and Larry Alexander
400 pages

“You follow the rules of war for you — not your enemy. You fight by rules to keep your humanity.”

The Eighth Air Force operating over Germany in the early 1940s did not fly the friendly skies. They operated in skies black with clouds of flak, and buzzing with angry German fighters, intent on bringing down the bombers that were destroying Germany’s ability to make war and its cities in the process.  But at least on one occasion, the fury of war gave way to mercy – for on (date), the beyond-crippled bomber Ye Olde Pub was followed by a German fighter who not only spared it, but escorted it wingtip to wingtip over his own nation’s most formidable anti-aircraft installations and safely to the sea. Years later, as  aging veterans, each man pondered in his soul a question. Charlie Brown wondered why he had been spared, while Franz Stigler wondered if his attempt at chivalry had worth the risk of the Gestapo’s wrath. The work is based in part on pilot interviews before their deaths in 2008, and follows their journeys as airmen, from the time they were boys playing with models to their attempts in later years to find the man with whom they’d shared a moment of grace. A Higher Call is an encouraging story of humanity rising above war, one which offers readers a rare memoir of a German fighter pilot’s experiences in Africa before the action moves to Europe.



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This week at the library: France, airborne chivalry, and Wendell Berry

Posted on July 29, 2013 by smellincoffee

Dear readers:

This past week saw the conclusion of my annual tribute to France after reading An Outline of French History, by Rene Sedillot. The work is translated from French, but bears no weakness on that account: it is as said before, ‘oddly personable’. The author endeavors to soar high enough above his subject that he can comment on happenings without sounding partial, and he is generally true to his hopes of nonpartisanship. Though it’s narrative history, there are no heroes or villains here; the author is equally hopeful and suspicious of whatever party is ruling at the moment, whether it be the king or ‘the people’.  I found it enjoyable, just not particularly remarkable. It is storied history weakened only by the fact that it was written in the late 1940s, and the status of France has changed considerably since then…though there is some amusement to be had in the fact that the author bemoans how strained France’s ties with her good old colonies in Africa and Indochina are becoming.

I also finished Hannah Coulter, an enchanting novel by Wendell Berry about a  young widow’s coming-of-age, for which comments are pending, and A Higher Call, a nonfiction work about two opposing pilots (one, an American bomber, the other a German fighter) who have a chance encounter in the skies that ends in mercy. Comments will be posted for it as well.

I am cheerfully undecided on what this week’s reading shall be. I have a set of essays by Wendell Berry, whom I’m increasingly fond of, entitled What Are People For?, and am fairly itching to get back to a couple of my science reads,  starting with Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish.  I also received Fighting Traffic, by Peter Norton, so there’s a good chance I’ll be starting it.

‘Til then, happy reading!

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French Kids Eat Everything

Posted on July 27, 2013 by smellincoffee

French Kids Eat Everything: How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters
© 2012 Karen Le Billon

320 pages

Upon landing in France to spend a year with her husband’s family, Karen Le Billon noticed something peculiar about French kids’ behavior at the dinner table. First, they were at the table, not in front of the TV: they were sitting politely there, as though they were actors in a 1950s film on table etiquette; and they were eating their vegetables.  Not pizza-declared-a-vegetable-by-Congress, but actual vegetables. And it wasn’t just one French families, but entire  cafeterias and villages full of them!  Spooked, but slightly envious, Le Billon committed herself to figuring out how the French created such well-mannered eaters. In French Kids Eat Everything¸ she documents her exploration of French food culture, and distills it into ten rules which can apply just as easily  to American families.

Those rules are partially sourced in both French parenting and in French gustatory culture. Her account gives further evidence to the lesson of French Women Don’t Get Fat and Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: the French take food very seriously. It is to be eaten at the table, in special dishes, preferably with a tablecloth, and at ordained times.  In Bringing up Bebe. Pamela Druckerman called attention to well-behaved French kids as well, and attributed it to the fact that the French expect their children to act like little adults. Le Billon’s French husband concurs, guffawing at the notion that children are innocent.  Children are untamed animals who must be civilized. Food culture is part of the education that refines selfish, noisy babies into that most elite specimen of mankind, the French person. The manners of the table teach children manners for life: the importance of spending time with family, of slowing down and disengaging from the hubbub of life outside,  of participating in little rituals that imbue the ordinary with meaning, of honoring your community by eating local produce.  Although the education is intended to groom children and open them to a life richer in experience and pleasure, the grooming itself requires discipline: French parents tend toward the authoritarian, insisting that their children try various foods time and again. Their authority is moderated by wisdom: they don’t insist or expect that children eat a new food completely up, only that they try it. “You didn’t like it this time? That’s ok; maybe you’ll like it next time,” Le Billon learns to teach her children.  Although children may pass through a period where they are adverse to trying new things, persistence will see them through, as it will adults:  people can learn to enjoy any food if they try it enough times.

The book records Le Billon not only divining out these rules by observing French families eat and talking with them about food, but her efforts to teach her mini-barbarians, her oh-so-American children, how to be civilized. In the end, the fact that she’s living in France is a tremendous aide: the lessons she flounders at teaching because she’s just learning herself are zealously enforced by her children’s teachers, friends, and family. When the Le Billons return to America, her girls are anomalies, and Le Billon has to figure out how to apply the lessons of French epicureanism to America’s fast food  mentality. That helps the  book become more than a romanticized paen to French dining, or an entertaining account of cultural exploration. There’s nothing in the ‘rules’ Le Billon notes that can’t be applied to every culture, or any:  most, indeed, is simple discipline. The trick for American parents reading will be applying those lessons while living in a culture which prides itself on being ‘real’, instead of mannerly.

French Kids Eat Everything is most enjoyable, especially for people interested in the simple pleasures. The rules, for the curious:

1. Parents are in charge of food education
2. Avoid emotional eating (no food rewards, bribes, etc)
3. Parents schedule meals and menus — kids eat what adults eat.
4. Plan family meals together — no distractions
5. Eat a variety of vegetables
6. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to taste it
7. No snacking!
8. Slow food is happy food.
9. Eat mostly real food.
10. Remember — relax. Eating should be joyful.

Related:
Bringing up Bébé: One Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, Pamela Druckerman
French Women Don’t Get Fat: the Secret of Eating for Pleasure, Mireille Guiliano
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong,  Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow

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The Choice

Posted on July 25, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism
© 2006 Russ Roberts
128 pages

 Imagine that George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life had wrestled not with the impulse to throw himself off of a bridge, but with the decision whether or not to endorse a protectionist presidential candidate whose platform promised to bar all imports from American shores – and that he was guided not by Clarence, but by the ghost of a long-dead economist, who showed him two different versions of America: one with free trade, and the other with barriers to imports. This is the premise of The Choice: A Parable of Free Trade and Protectionism, which is like two of Roberts’ other works, a policy argument in the form of a novel.

Like The Price of Everything, it’s short on narrative despite having the most ‘storied’ premise. Instead, the work is a series of debate dialogues about economic issues that join together to constitute one larger argument for tree trade and against protectionism. Some points ring more true than others, for instance Russell’s/Ricardo’s demonstration of how total economic self-sufficiency impoverishes a society. He uses the example of a household that chooses to ‘bar the import of bread’ and begin manufacturing its own bread.  Certainly, this has advantages: homemade bread is of a far superior quality and can be made to suit one’s own tastes. But the time involved in making bread to satisfy constant demand for it will take away from other activities, even if the household chooses to consume less bread.  Other points don’t fly nearly as well, like Roberts maintaining that though American jobs will be through free trade, other opportunities will be created. In the book, an auto plant closes, and the children of that plant’s workers thus look for new opportunities in a pharmaceutical company that opens to sell drugs to Japan. If the plant hadn’t moved to Japan, not only would those children have taken the same job as their parents (bo-ring!), but Japanese people wouldn’t have had money to buy American drugs.  Yes, it sucks to be the parents, but life balances out in the aggregate. I don’t like this argument, and ironically just yesterday I heard Roberts saying he doesn’t like it much either*, as it stinks of utilitarianism.  It’s of poor consolation to the auto workers who lost their livelihood, but – life is change.  Roberts hasn’t quite convinced me, though now I understand more fully the reasoning behind free trade arguments. I balk at embracing the book enthusiastically, however, because Roberts uses such an extreme example to argue with: his choice is between free trade America and an America totally without imports. Pardon may be granted in that it’s difficult to make much of an argument between two more moderate stances, as distinctions are blurred.

Be forewarned: though a work of interest to those thinking on the merits of free trade, or attempting to understand  the economics of such,  this is on the dry side. Lively as Roberts’ writing is, policy debates about systemic interaction can only get so exciting.

*http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/07/michael_lind_on.html

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It Can’t Happen Here

Posted on July 24, 2013 by smellincoffee

It Can’t Happen Here
© 1935 Sinclair Lewis
400 pages

The Great Depression sent the entire western world reeling, destroying faith in the existing order and creating opportunities for charismatic, forceful leaders with vision to sweep into power and create societies anew in their image – but their new orders introduced us to the nightmare world of the totalitarian state, which arise in Germany, Japan, Italy, and in Sinclair Lewis’ cautionary tale, the United States. It Can’t Happen Here is the story of the rise of American fascism,  beating the bible and waving a cross.

The tale is told through the eyes of Doremus Jessup, a solid liberal who amuses himself by rubbing shoulders with staunch conservatives at the Rotary Club, and then scandalizing them by penning editorials sympathetic to communists. He’s manifestly horrified by the rise of one Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a folksy dope whose radical plan for transforming America manages to unite rich and poor, traditional and modern, together in a schizophrenic platform.  He was not always horrified, though – he once though Windrip a comic buffoon, who could not possibly be voted in in a respectable election

The Windrip plan includes, among other things,  strict income limits, a $3000 handout to every citizen of the land,  boosted defense spending, the forbidding of women and Negroes from ‘inappropriate’ occupations, the barring of labor unions, and whatever constitutional amendments or acts of Congress are needed to allow the President, hereafter known as The Chief,  to give the nation a strong, guiding hand without being tied down by Congress.   Such a broad and sometimes self-contradictory platform  is similar to that of the “National Socialists”, and as Windrip’s reign commences, Lewis takes inspiration from Hitler’s reorganization of Germany.  That organization is literal, for Windrip breaks down state and county boundaries and imposes his own set of numbered provinces and distracts, each headed by a loyal minion. Instead of the SS,  Windrip has his ‘MM’s: the Minutemen, whose garb  hearkens to western pioneers.  As much as Windrip’s reign reminds students of European history of the Nazification of Germany,  it is a distinctly American kind of fascism, hearkening to the American mythology of the Founding Fathers, but still reactionary and anti-modern, even in its embrace of modern tools and the modern state. The idea is the same: America has gotten soft, decadent, and corrupt. It needs a kick in the seat of the pants, and Windrip is the main to give it: he’ll make America mighty again, he’ll take on the rich Jews and put the economy to work for Americans, not a few bankers; he’ll revitalize the Old Time Religion and maybe spread it to a few heathen Catholics down in Mexico.

The account follows the relatively quick corruption of the American republic into the empire, and though bleak at times, it is satire, and ends on a relatively happy note.  Although such overt, drastic actions seem unlikely today, and are jarringly unexpected turns of event even in the book, the context of the thirties makes the rise of Windrip more plausible, especially given the success of Huey Long, who was a political boss with a kindred platform until his assassination.  Although the spectre of totalitarianism is alive and well,  it is far more subtle: no marching boots, thank you, just constant surveillance and algorithmized scrutiny. Readers of alt-history and those with an interest in politics will doubtless find this fascinating, if not as potent a warning as it once was.

Related:

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This week at the library (7/22): free trade, American Hitler, and French food

Posted on July 23, 2013 by smellincoffee

Dear readers:

This past week has been on the quiet side. I finished yet another book by Russ Roberts, this one proclaiming the virtues of free trade (The Choice),  and resumed reading Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here, a novel set and published in the late 1930s, featuring the rise of an American Hitler – a ‘corn pone Nazi’, to borrow from James Howard Kunstler.  That work first attracted my attention during the 2010 election cycle when the rise of the bible-thumping Tea Party and its constant allusions to the Revolution, brought to mind the quote: when fascism comes to America, it will wrapped in the Flag and carrying the Cross. Turns out that quotation is sourced to this very novel!  Comments for both will follow in the next couple of days.

My current reading consists of An Outline of French History, which is enjoyable enough though not particularly remarkable,  and French Kids Eat Everything, which I’m loving.  These constitute my belated Bastille Day reading, intended to celebrate the French Revolution and French culture in general. I’m expecting a few titles in the post this week, including a collection of essays by Wendell Berry (What Are People For?) and — at long last! — Fighting Traffic, by Peter Norton.  I’ve been waiting for two years for that book to be offered at a price lower than $30. The timing is perfect, as the book will complement Getting There rather nicely. While one examines the competition between highways and cars and the rails over intercity transportation, Fighting Traffic is an account of how cars came to take over the streets, turning residential neighborhoods into traffic sewers.

The tyranny of this dictatorship isn’t primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work. It’s the fault  of Doremus Jessup! Of all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded Doremus Jessups who have let the demagogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest.
“A few months ago I thought the slaughter of the Civil War, and the agitation of the violent Abolitionists who helped bring it on, were evil. But possibly they had to be violent, because easy-going citizens like me couldn’t be stirred up otherwise. If our grandfathers had had the alertness and courage to see the evils of slavery and of the government conduced by gentlemen for gentlemen only, there wouldn’t have been any need for agitators and war and blood.
“It’s my sort, the Responsible Citizens who’ve felt ourselves superior because we’ve been well-to-do and what we thought was ‘educated’ who brought on the Civil War, the French Revolution, and now the Fascist Dictatorship. It’s I who murdered Rabbi de Verez. It’s I who persecuted the Jews and the Negroes. I can blame no Aras Dilley, no Shad Ledue, no Buzz Windrip, but only my own timid soul and drowsy mind. Forgive, O Lord!
“Is it too late?”

p. 169, It Can’t Happen Here.

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Getting There

Posted on July 19, 2013 by smellincoffee

Getting There: the Epic Struggle  between Road and Rail in the American Century
© 1996 Stephen Goddard
366 pages

Regardless of the status of George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, and William Pitt, each man of power traveled at the same speed as the people they governed: no faster than a running horse. But in the early-mid 19th century, the industrial revolution began producing modes of transportation that would shrink continents, reducing journeys of months into a solitary week. Trains first shriveled the distance and their spans allowed for unprecedented economic growth. That growth produced rail’s first rival, the automobiles — and the highways they drove on.  Their competition produced a clear winner in the American  20th century: while the rail lines withered in neglect and passenger service vanished almost entirely,  highways covered the landscape.  But their struggle was not a fair fight between equals, as both looked for government support and the highwaymen’s superior politicking created a fixed game. Getting There is a history of how the rail barons squandered public trust,  failed to unite in the face of potent opposition, and continued to flounder as they were supplanted in the lobbying court by a coalition of highwaymen and automobile manufacturers.  The status of the great highways as money pits, however, and the fracturing of that opposing coalition present an opportunity for rail to rally, in Goddard’s view.

Goddard begins with a brief history of rail transportation’s origins before the struggle between the two ensued, a history pitched toward demonstrating how the rail companies’ early success led to abuses of the public, and thus to opposition —  — both by popular movements, like the Grange movement of farmers protesting high rail prices in the midwest, then by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first government institution designed to oversee any part of the economy. The ICC proved first tepid, then tyrannical, and for most of the book plays the part of a ‘bad ref’ or crooked umpire, working the game against  trains and for the highwaymen. While regulations forced  rail companies to quote the same price for hauling freight regardless of circumstances, unregulated truck drivers could change their rates at their own discretion: rail companies were forced to write to D.C. for permission, and by the time said clearance arrived, the opportunity for hauling would have already vanished.  Ironically, the rail companies were partially complicit in their troubles: they promoted the first ‘good roads’ measures so that trucks would take unprofitable short runs off of their balance streets — and so that automobiles would relieve the burden of passengers. Those measures would prove to be another unearned advantage  for the automobile industry and highways: while rail companies created and maintained their own lines and stock, car companies, and later car drivers, were given such infrastructure, the funds coming from American taxpayers.

Although the history of American rail is checkered with self-serving episodes, the automobile industry fares no better, as their deliberate campaign to destroy trolley lines in the city and replace them with buses demonstrates. Forcing the rails’ decline and letting the infrastructure fall into scrap would be egregiously unwise, in Goddard’s view. He outlines the problems of our highway-and-auto dominated system: destruction of cities,  the financial albatross of maintenance, and pollution among them.  While he doesn’t launch into an extensive plea for a rail renaissance, he sees one as inevitable — if government will get out of the way and stop propping up the trains’ competitors.  Getting There proves an expansive history — brimming with detail, but never plodding, and covering social life as well as business and politics.

Related:
Waiting on a Train: A Year Spent Riding Across America, James McCommons
Straphanger: Saving Our Cities from the Automobile, Taras Grescoe
The Great Railroad Revolution: A History of Trains in America, Christian Wolmar
Asphalt Nation, Jane Holtz Keay

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Brand Failures

Posted on July 17, 2013 by smellincoffee
Brand Failures: the Truth about the 100 Greatest Branding Mistakes of All Time
© 2003 Matt Haig
310 pages


        What helps a brand succeed – or makes it fail? Brand Failures attempts to divine out the secrets to success by examining one hundred products or companies which have tanked. Some were new, others ancient, still others new ventures backed by established titans – but failure comes to all.  Each of the book’s one hundred sections features a different American or British brand. The sections vary in length: New Coke, which starts the work off, features a history of Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s competition, setting the stage for why Coca-Cola made the decision it to rework its product, but the book’s midpoint is taken by a series of paragraph-long sections which are more a list of humorous advertising mistranslations than proper chapters. The longer chapters end in list of lessons learned, from the patently obvious (“Advertising is important”) to the more insightful (“Don’t clone your competitors”) .  Some of the lessons conflict: while the author asserts at the start that in the Age of Branding,  actual products matter little compared to the power of the brand, the way it makes people feel.  Hence, while people in blind taste tastes may have preferred New Coke to classic coke and Pepsi,  when the actual product was rolled out, people acted poorly: it wasn’t the coke they had been brought up with. They had been told “Coke is It”, and were now expected to believe that Coke wasn’t It.  

         Despite the author’s deemphasizing the value of a product, numerous examples demonstrate that it can’t be ignored, either.  Haig uses Beta-Max and VCR to back up his belief that quality isn’t particularly important: while he stresses the audio and video quality of the Betamax tapes,  his account also mentions the fact that whole movies could not fit on such tapes.  The quality of the picture doesn’t equal the quality of the product overall.   To whom these lessons are to be imparted is uncertain. While they’re ostensibly aimed at business personalities attempting to launch or expand a brand, would such personalities really be reading a work written for popular audiences?  Wouldn’t marketing executives be paying more attention to marketing journals?  I’m particularly interested in the way marketing works so I can evade its tricks, but I found the work more entertaining as one of business history, for some of the products released were truly weird. In the 1950s, for instance, Dodge produced a car marketed for women: called La Femme and covered in pink inside and out, with floral patterns on the seats, it looked like something even Mattel would  be reluctant to foist on Barbie. (The lesson of this section: don’t patronize customers.)

            This breezy and entertaining book may be of use to budding entrepreneurs, but I suspect most readers who be those wanting to be amused by business misadventures, which it certainly provides.

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This week at the library: politics, Star Trek, a Cold War fantasy for kids, and trains

Posted on July 15, 2013 by smellincoffee
Last week’s titles: 
The Price of Everything, Russell D. Roberts  | What It Means to be a Libertarian, Charles Murray |  Star Trek Silent Weapons, David Mack |  Day of Reckoning, Pat Buchanan | Getting There, Charles Goddard
Dear readers:
This week has seen some grappling with politics, with Star Trek, fantasy, and trains for relaxation.  Both The Price of Everything and What It Means to be a Libertarian  were on the…well, libertarian side, with Roberts exploring how prices work and vouching for markets as a better way of arranging things than government fiat. Murray was more philosophical, starting off by establishing that libertarianism is fundamentally against coercion of any kind, whether physical force or taxation. After a strong start, he then attempts to explore what a libertarian society would look like: it’s one with courts and interstates, and not much else, though allowances can be made for government control of ‘natural monopolies’ like infrastructure that requires an enormous amount of capital and coordination (hence, highways). As much as I like his philosophy in theory, its widespread application depends entirely too much on the hope that things will sort themselves out for me.  I prefer concrete evidence, not idealism — even Murray’s very attractive kind, which posits that the government putting citizens’ responsibility for their lives will suddenly witness a rebirth of civic virtue. a rebirth I’d delight to see. 
I resumed reading the Cold Equations trilogy by David Mack,  which actually took a potshot at libertarianism by putting the action on crime-ridden Orion, where the government stays out of business and out of most everything else.  I didn’t plan Mack as a counter to Murray, so it must have been Fate. Obviously. The book was a fantastic mystery-turned-political thriller, which sees the powers within the Typhon Pact vying for dominance, while keeping a close eye on NATO the Khitomer Accord, which consists of the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Cardassians, and a few other races who were not quite all the way evil.  The Typhon Pact strife seems to hint that the Downfall series of books being planned for autumn will see the Evil League of Evil, not the Justice League of the Federation, disintegrate. 
Speaking of self-defeating evil, Pat Buchanan thinks the United States has become that, invading everyone while simultaneously letting cheap goods destroy American manufacturers and American jobs. He rails against a handful of ideas — imperialism, the triumph of ideology, the decline of Anglo-Americans, the glorification of free trade —  but only the first two really piqued my interest. Buchanan is called a paleoconservative, and they seem to  differ from ‘neoconservatives’ on the key issues of invading people and free trade.  Buchanan believes we shouldn’t invade people, but should have the ability to do so if need be, and we should raise protective tariffs to keep other people’s stuff from invading us. We should have an export surplus, not a trade deficit.  Out of self-interest I’m given to agree, but if the other fellows take the same stance it seems we’ll have  a lot of nations with trade walls up, with the ships of commerce unable to pass them. This seems a story with a sad ending. You could invade people and force them to buy your stuff (he’s all for mercantilism), but invading people is out, so…..
On the subject of strife between nations, I recently read a fantastically funny Cold War fantasy about a middle-schooler named Jane whose parents flee McCarthyist witch hunts to live in London, where Jane immediately complicates their lives further by getting involved in a battle between intelligence agencies and an ancient order of chemists. But really, how often do you make friends with someone who just happens to be heir to arcane knowledge passed down through uncountable generations, knowledge that can heal the body, turn it into a bird, and even — maybe — squelch an atom bomb of the earth-shattering kaboom sort?  Soon enough Jane and her friends (a trio, naturally) are on the run from both the British government and the Soviets. The resulting shenanigans make for hilarious light fantasy, the only fly in the ointment being the fact that the kids are expected to read a book composed in ancient Greek and Latin by means of their grammar school Latin primer.  I can’t even read Der Spiegel on my uni-Deutsch, let alone a technical journal.
So! Next week! Today being the 14th, I should be concluding a series of French reads right about now. I am not. Call it poor planning, but my interlibrary loan books haven’t arrived, so today I’ve been reading an oddly personal survey of French history called The Outline of French History.  I’ll be continuing that this week, along with (perhaps) The Body Electric, the last in the Cold Equations trilogy. After that, who knows?  Once I’ve paid honor to France there are a few essay collections I’m itching to read, from Wendell Berry to Bertrand Russell.  I also have a book on airplanes checked out, because airplanes are fun.  Not as much fun as trains, but fun still. Oh, and speaking of trains — I also read Getting There, about the struggle between railroads and highways for transportation dominance. Remarks will be posted later in the week.
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The Price of Everything

Posted on July 15, 2013 by smellincoffee

The Price of Everything
© 2009 Russell D. Roberts
224 pages

The Price of Everything is an economics novel about the virtues of prices and markets, explaining how they work to maximize efficiency and spread goods out among those who need them and are willing to pay. Like The Invisible Heart, it is a policy treatise in novel form. There, an economics professor fell in love with a liberal English professor and slowly worked his dark-side libertarian magic on her. Here, another economics professor, this one the provost of a university, takes a passionate youth leader with a social-justice agenda under her wing.  Roberts is harder on his ideological opponents here than in The Invisible Heart, possibly there because his doppelganger there was trying to seduce his opponent, while his professor is only trying to turn her target into the man who will bring the free market to Cuba.

The kickoff issue in The Price of Everything is a minor earthquake which causes a run on supply stores. Home Depot and like stores quickly sell out, but Big Box, a megacorporation which makes Wal-Mart look like a mom and pop operation, doubles its prices to take advantage of the uptick in demand. This causes outrage among customers, who are catalyzed by the presence of a pregnant woman who is unable to afford her groceries and led by young Ramon Fernandez, who condemns the store in a speech and then takes up an offering to allow the lady to meet her need.  Having discovered a knack for impassioned rabble-rousing, Fernandez decides to hold a rally on his university campus, protesting the fact that a new building is named after the Big Box corporation, who are donors. That attracts the attention of the professor, who chatting with Fernandez under the pretense of grooming him to be a more effective youth leader, engages him in questions and discussion.In reality,  she’s ever-so-slightly steering him toward her point of view. Look at it this way, she says:  before the earthquake, both Home Depot and Big Box had the supplies on hand. After the earthquake, Home Depot maintained its price (fair to the consumer) and Big Box doubled its own.  But from whom did the lady find her supplies? Big Box, because it ensured that the only people taking the supplies were those for whom they were most important.  Had Big Box maintained its normal prices, all the supplies might have been bought up by whoever happened by first and decided to grab some extras. Home Depot’s approach might be ‘nicer’, but  who served the lady’s needs? (Well, the crowd did, but that’s not the point she wanted to make.)

Roberts’ arguments make a horrible kind of sense, though it goes against the grain to hear a defense for ‘price gouging’.  More palatable is his attempt to convey the ‘genius’ of prices as regulating agents, ensuring that everyone looking for lead (his example of choice) gets enough, but not too much, the balancing being set by competition between firms trying to acquire supplies. This argument is especially convincing because the counter is so weak: if markets don’t set prices, what will? Who can acquire and process all of the information needed to decide whose needs are greater than anyone else’s?  (Maybe Google and the NSA, if they joined forces…) And by what standard are they using? Who plans for whom?

The Price of Everything is not quite as potent as The Invisible Heart, but it’s still a fun little way to digest economic arguments from an author who is passionate, but not obnoxious; bold, but altogether pleasant.

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