Here is a selection of new titles added to collection in the past week.
Abide and go: missional theosis in the Gospel of John /Michael J. Gorman. In this book for both the academy and the church, Gorman argues that John has a profound spirituality that is robustly missional, and that it can be summarized in the paradoxical phrase Abide and go, from John 15. This spirituality, argues Gorman, can be called missional theosis.
Asian healing traditions in counseling and psychotherapy /edited by Roy Moodley, Ted Lo, Na Zhu. Explores the various healing approaches and practices in the East and bridges them with those in the West to show counselors how to provide culturally sensitive services to distinct populations. The Editors bring together leading scholars across Asia to demystify and critically analyze traditional Far East Asian healing practices—such as Chinese Taoist Healing practices, Morita Therapy, Naikan Therapy, Mindfulness and Existential Therapy, Buddhism and Mindfulness Meditation, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy—in relation to health and mental health in the West. The book will not only show counselors how to apply Eastern and Western approaches to their practices but will also shape the direction of counseling and psychotherapy research for many years to come.
Dorothy L. Sayers: a biography: death, Dante, and Lord Peter Wimsey /Colin Duriez. Drawing on material often difficult to access, particularly her collected letters, Duriez reassesses Sayers’ life, her writings, her studies, and her faith to present a rich and captivating portrait of this formidable character.
Good questions: a year of open-ended math problems for grades 2-4 /Carole Fullerton. A problem-a-day resource that includes rich tasks ideal for grades 2, 3 and 4. Organized by topic and structured in problem sets of 5, this simple to use teacher resource includes 200 mathematically important questions to engage your students in deep thinking.
Incomplete and random acts of kindness /David Eldridge. The play moves between dream story and real lives to tell an intricate, complex story of a young man dealing with the break up of his family and the legacy of race responsibility.
Integrative approaches to psychology and Christianity: an introduction to worldview issues, philosophical foundations, and models of integration /David N. Entwistle. Entwistle’s book elucidates historical, philosophical, and practical issues in the integration of psychology and Christianity. The current edition considers recent advances in both Catholic and Protestant thinking on integration, including contemporary questions about what evangelicalism is (and is not) that shape evangelical reactions to the integration debate. New content ranges from information about the contrasting views of Tertullian and Augustine, to insights from contemporary psychology about factors that adversely affect the quality and reliability of human thinking, to how conflict over COVID-19 has entered contemporary religious debate.
Mammal bones and teeth: an introductory guide to methods of identification /Simon Hillson. This guide is designed as an introduction to the basic methods for identifying mammal bones and teeth. It is intended to highlight for beginners the main points on which identifications can be made on the bulk of bones and teeth from a small range of common Old World mammals.
Noah: a play /by Andre Obey ; English text by Arthur Wilmurt Noah, his wife, his three sons and three of the neighbors’ girls embark with the animals on God’s ark. When the rain ends, the grand beauty of the great waters fills them with rejoicing and they dance around the deck in the dawn of a golden age. But Noah becomes the story of a kindly old man who grows lonely in his faith, and who is rudely deserted by the young folks the moment they touch foot to land.
Royal Court Theatre presents Mother Teresa is dead /by Helen Edmundson. SMark arrives in a village near Madras to try and find his wife. He does not understand what has driven her to abandon her young son. Jane cannot explain why she needed to escape or how she ended up looking after children in India or what is in the bag she’s been holding on to. It is hot, dusty and poor, and a long way from their comfortable life in London.
Shalom and the community of creation: an Indigenous vision /Randy Woodley. Woodley offers an answer: learn more about the Native American ‘Harmony Way, ‘ a concept that closely parallels biblical shalom. Doing so can bring reconciliation between Euro-Westerners and indigenous peoples, a new connectedness with the Creator and creation, an end to imperial warfare, the ability to live in the moment, justice, restoration — and a more biblically authentic spirituality. Rooted in redemptive correction, this book calls for true partnership through the co-creation of new theological systems that foster wholeness and peace.
Standoff: why reconciliation fails Indigenous people and how to fix it /Bruce McIvor. In this series of concise and thoughtful essays, lawyer and historian McIvor explains why reconciliation with Indigenous peoples is failing and what needs to be done to fix it. McIvor’s essays are honest and heartfelt. In clear, plain language he explains the historical and social forces that underpin the development of Indigenous law, criticizes the current legal shortcomings and charts a practical, principled way forward. His writing covers many of the most important issues that have become part of a national dialogue, including systemic racism, treaty rights, violence against Indigenous people, Métis identity, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and the duty to consult.
The believing primate: scientific, philosophical, and theological reflections on the origin of religion /edited by Jeffrey Schloss and Michael J. Murray. This book draws on the expertise of scientists, philosophers, and theologians, from across a wide spectrum of debate, to describe and discuss current scientific accounts or religion.
The Cambridge companion to ancient Athens /edited by Jenifer Neils, Dylan K. Rogers. This Companion is a comprehensive introduction the city, its topography and monuments, inhabitants and cultural institutions, religious rituals and politics. Chapters link the religious, cultural, and political institutions of Athens to the physical locales in which they took place. Discussion of the urban plan, with its streets, gates, walls, and public and private buildings, provide readers with a thorough understanding of how the city operated and what people saw, heard, smelled, and tasted as they flowed through it. Drawing on the latest scholarship, as well as excavation discoveries at the Agora, sanctuaries, and cemeteries, the Companion explores how the city was planned, how it functioned, and how it was transformed from a democratic polis into a Roman city.
The Cambridge companion to British fiction: 1980-2018 /edited by Peter Boxall. This collection brings together some of the most penetrating critics of the contemporary, to explore the role that the British novel has had in shaping the cultural landscape of our time, at a moment, in the wake of the EU referendum of 2016, when the question of what it means to be British has become newly urgent.
The Cambridge companion to British literature of the 1930s /edited by James Smith. This Companion offers the reader an incisive survey covering the decade’s literature and its status in critical debates. Across the chapters, sustained attention is given to writers of growing scholarly interest, to pivotal authors of the period, such as Auden, Orwell, and Woolf, to the development of key literary forms and themes, and to the relationship between this literature and the decade’s pressing social and political contexts.
The Cambridge companion to Canadian literature /edited by Eva-Marie Kröller. For this edition several chapters have been completely rewritten to reflect major developments in Canadian literature since 2004. Surveys of fiction, drama and poetry are complemented by chapters on Aboriginal writing, autobiography, literary criticism, writing by women and the emergence of urban writing. Areas of research that have expanded since the first edition include environmental concerns and questions of sexuality which are freshly explored across several different chapters.
The Cambridge companion to eighteenth-century thought /edited by Frans De Bruyn. The Cambridge Companion is designed to provide an overview of intellectual life in the eighteenth century, with an emphasis on currents of thought in the English-speaking world as it was then constituted, encompassing Britain, Ireland, and Anglophone North America. The essays in this volume survey themes, intellectual movements, and major thinkers who contributed significantly to an expanding intellectual conversation.
The Cambridge companion to environmental humanities /edited by Jeffrey Cohen, Stephanie Foote. This Companion offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the environmental humanities, an interdisciplinary movement that responds to a world reconfigured by climate change and its effects, from environmental racism and global migration to resource impoverishment and the importance of the nonhuman world. It addresses the twenty-first century recognition of an environmental crisis – its antecedents, current forms, and future trajectories – as well as possible responses to it. Each chapter examines a key topic or theme in Environmental Humanities, shows why that topic emerged as a category of study, explores the different approaches to the topics, suggests future avenues of inquiry, and considers the topic’s global implications, especially those that involve environmental justice issues.
The Cambridge companion to human rights and literature /edited by Crystal Parikh. The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights and Literature introduces this new and exciting field of study in the humanities. It explores the historical and institutional contexts, theoretical concepts, genres, and methods that literature and human rights share. Equally accessible to beginners in the field and more advanced researchers, this Companion emphasizes both the literary and interdisciplinary dimensions of human rights and the humanities.
The Cambridge companion to Irish poets /edited by Gerald Dawe. The Cambridge offers a fascinating introduction to Irish poetry from the seventeenth century to the present. Aimed primarily at lovers of poetry, it examines a wide range of poets, including household names, such as Jonathan Swift, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, and Paul Muldoon. The book is comprised of thirty chapters written by critics, leading scholars and poets, who bring an authoritative and accessible understanding to their subjects. Each chapter gives an overview of a poet’s work and guides the general reader through the wider cultural, historical and comparative contexts. It is a book that will help and guide general readers through the many achievements of Irish poets.
The Cambridge companion to J.M. Coetzee /edited by Jarad Zimbler. Provides a compelling introduction for new readers, as well as fresh perspectives and provocations for those long familiar with Coetzee’s works. All of Coetzee’s published novels and autobiographical fictions are discussed at length, and there is extensive treatment of his translations, scholarly books and essays, and volumes of correspondence. Written by an international team of contributors, this Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to this important writer, establishes new avenues of discovery, and explains Coetzee’s undiminished ability to challenge and surprise his readers with inventive works of striking power and intensity.
The Cambridge companion to literature and disability /edited by Clare Barker, University of Leeds ; Stuart Murray, University of Leeds. This Companion analyzes the representation of disability in literatures in English, including American and postcolonial writing, across all major time periods and through a variety of critical approaches. With contributions from major figures in literary disability studies, The Cambridge Companion covers a wide range of impairments, including cognitive difference, neurobehavioral conditions, and mental and chronic illnesses. This book shows how disability demands innovation in literary form and aesthetics, challenges the notion of a human ‘norm’ in the writing of character, and redraws the ways in which writing makes meaning of the broad spectrum of humanity.
The Cambridge companion to literature and food /edited by J. Michelle Coghlan. This Companion provides an overview of gustation, gastronomy, agriculture and alimentary activism in literature from the medieval period to the present day, as well as an illuminating introduction to cookbooks as literature. Bringing together sixteen original essays by leading scholars, the collection rethinks literary food from a variety of critical angles, including gender and sexuality, critical race studies, postcolonial studies, eco-criticism and children’s literature. Topics covered include mealtime decorum in Chaucer, Milton’s culinary metaphors, early American taste, Romantic gastronomy, Victorian eating, African-American women’s culinary writing, modernist food experiments, Julia Child and cold war cooking, industrialized food in children’s literature, agricultural horror and farmworker activism, queer cookbooks, hunger as protest and postcolonial legacy, and ‘dude food’ in contemporary food blogs.
The Cambridge companion to literature and religion /edited by Susan M. Felch. Each essay in this Companion examines one or more literary texts and a religious tradition to illustrate how we can understand both literature and religion better by looking at them in tandem. The Cambridge Companion offers an accessible treatment of both Dharmic and Abrahamic traditions. It provides close readings of texts rather than surveys of large topics, making it an ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate students of literature and religion.
The Cambridge companion to literature and the Anthropocene /edited by John Parham. Offers the most comprehensive survey yet of how literature can address the social, cultural, and philosophical questions posed by the Anthropocene. This volume addresses the old and new literary forms – from novels, plays, poetry, and essays to exciting and evolving genres such as ‘cli-fi’, experimental poetry, interspecies design, gaming, weird, ecotopian and petro-fiction, and ‘new’ nature writing. This unique Companion offers a compelling account of how to read literature through the Anthropocene and of how literature might yet help us imagine a better world.
The Cambridge companion to literature and the posthuman /edited by Bruce Clarke, Manuela Rossini. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman is the first work of its kind to gather diverse critical treatments of the posthuman and posthumanism together in a single volume. Fifteen scholars from six different countries address the historical and aesthetic dimensions of posthuman figures alongside posthumanism as a new paradigm in the critical humanities. The three parts and their chapters trace the history of the posthuman in literature and other media, including film and video games; and identifies major political, philosophical, and techno-scientific issues raised in the literary and cinematic narratives of the posthuman and posthumanist discourses.
The Cambridge companion to Margaret Atwood /edited by Coral Ann Howells. Exploring Atwood in our contemporary context, this edition discusses the relationship between her Canadian identity and her role as an international literary celebrity and spokesperson on global issues, ranging from environmentalism to women’s rights to digital technology. As well as providing novel insights into Atwood’s recent dystopias and classic texts, this edition highlights a significant dimension in the reception of Atwood’s work, with new material on the striking television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale.
The Cambridge companion to medieval British manuscripts /edited by Orietta Da Rold and Elaine Treharne. This Cambridge Companion orientates students in the complex, multidisciplinary study of medieval book production and contemporary display of manuscripts from c.600-1500. Accessible explanations draw on key case studies to illustrate the major methodologies and explain why skills in understanding early book production are so critical for reading, editing, and accessing a rich cultural heritage. Chapters by leading specialists in manuscript studies range from explaining how manuscripts were stored, to revealing the complex networks of readers and writers which can be understood through manuscripts, to an in depth discussion on the Wycliffe Bible.
The Cambridge companion to Nineteen eighty-four /edited by Nathan Waddell. This Companion builds on successive waves of generational inheritance and debate in the novel’s reception by asking new questions about how and why Nineteen Eighty-Four was written, what it means, and why it matters. Established concerns (e.g. Orwell’s attitude to the working class, his anxieties about the socio-political compartmentalization of the post-war world) are presented alongside newer ones (e.g. his views on evil, and the influence of Nineteen Eighty-Four on comics). Individual essays help us see in new ways how Orwell’s most famous work continues to be a novel for our times.
The Cambridge companion to postcolonial poetry /edited by Jahan Ramazani. The Cambridge Companion is the first collection of essays to explore postcolonial poetry through regional, historical, political, formal, textual, gender, and comparative approaches. The comparative essays analyze poetry from across the postcolonial anglophone world in relation to postcolonialism and modernism, fixed and free forms, experimentation, oral performance and creole languages, protest poetry, the poetic mapping of urban and rural spaces, poetic embodiments of sexuality and gender, poetry and publishing history, and poetry’s response to, and reimagining of, globalization.
The Cambridge companion to postcolonial travel writing /edited by Robert Clarke, University of Tasmania. Postcolonial Travel Writing offers readers an insight into the scope and range of perspectives that one encounters in this field of writing. This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of developments in the field, appealing to students and teachers of travel writing and postcolonial studies.
The Cambridge companion to queer studies /edited by Siobhan B. Somerville, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign This companion provides a guide to queer inquiry in literary and cultural studies, a wide ranging and porous area of study that has been especially generative for the larger interdisciplinary field of queer studies over the last three decades.
The Cambridge companion to Rabindranath Tagore /edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri. This volume brings together eminent Tagore scholars to create a comprehensive book that sits very well within the Cambridge Companions to Literature series. The volume editor, Emeritus Professor Chaudhuri, is a stalwart in Tagore studies and is renowned globally for his scholarship. This volume is a first of its kind attempt to initiate and continue a discussion of Tagore studies globally.
The Cambridge companion to Sappho /edited by P. J. Finglass and Adrian Kelly. Provides an up-to-date survey of this remarkable, inspiring, and mysterious Greek writer, whose poetic corpus has been significantly expanded in recent years thanks to the discovery of new papyrus sources. Containing an introduction, prologue and thirty-three chapters, the book examines Sappho’s historical, social, and literary contexts, the nature of her poetic achievement, the transmission, loss, and rediscovery of her poetry, and the reception of that poetry in cultures far removed from ancient Greece. All Greek is translated, making the volume accessible to everyone interested in one of the most significant creative artists of all time.
The Cambridge companion to Shakespeare and race /edited by Ayanna Thompson. The Cambridge Companion shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable. Moving well beyond Othello, the collection invites the reader to understand racialized discourses, rhetoric, and performances in all of Shakespeare’s plays, including the comedies and histories. The collection helps students to grapple with the unique role performance plays in constructions of race by Shakespeare (and in Shakespearean performances), considering both historical and contemporary actors and directors. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race will be the first book that truly frames Shakespeare studies and early modern race studies for a nonspecialist, student audience.
The Cambridge companion to ‘The Canterbury tales’ /edited by Frank Grady. Students new to Chaucer will find in this Companion a lively introduction to the poem’s diversity, depth, and wonder. Readers returning to the Tales will appreciate the chapters’ fresh engagement with the individual tales and their often complicated critical histories, inflected in recent decades by critical approaches attentive to issues of gender, sexuality, class, and language.
The Cambridge companion to the graphic novel /edited by Stephen E. Tabachnick. The Cambridge Companion examines the evolution of comic books into graphic novels and the distinct development of this art form both in America and around the world. This Companion also explores the diverse subgenres often associated with it, such as journalism, fiction, historical fiction, autobiography, biography, science fiction and fantasy. Leading scholars offer insights into graphic novel adaptations of prose works and the adaptation of graphic novels to films; analyses of outstanding graphic novels, like Maus and The Walking Man; an overview which distinguishes the international graphic novel from its American counterpart; and analyses of how the form works and what it teaches, making this book a key resource for scholars, graduate students and undergraduate students alike.
The Cambridge companion to the literature of Berlin /edited by Andrew J. Webber, University of Cambridge. This collection of essays by international specialists in the literature of Berlin provides a lively and stimulating account of writing in and about the city in the modern period. The first eight chapters chart key chronological developments from 1750 to the present day, while subsequent chapters focus on Berlin drama and poetry in the twentieth. Each chapter provides an informative overview along with closer readings of exemplary texts. The volume is designed to be accessible for readers seeking an introduction to the literature of Berlin, while also providing new perspectives for those already familiar with the topic..
The Cambridge companion to the literature of the American Renaissance /edited by Christopher N. Phillips. This companion takes up the concept of the American Renaissance and explores its origins, meaning, and longevity. Essays by distinguished scholars move chronologically from the formative reading of American Renaissance authors to the careers of major figures ignored by Matthiessen, including Stowe, Douglass, Harper, and Longfellow. This volume uses the best of current literary studies to illuminate an era that reaches far beyond the Civil War and continues to shape our understanding of American literature.
The Cambridge companion to the literature of the Crusades /edited by Anthony Bale. This Companion provides a critical overview of the diverse and multilingual literary output connected with crusading over the last millennium, from the first writings which sought to understand and report on what was happening, to contemporary Medievalism in which crusading is a potent image of holy war and jihad. The chapters show the enduring legacy of the crusaders’ imagery, from the chansons de geste to Walter Scott, from Charlemagne to Orlando Bloom.
The Cambridge companion to the novel /edited by Eric Bulson. This Companion focuses on the novel as a global genre with a 2,000-year history.
The Cambridge companion to the writings of Julius Caesar /edited by Luca Grillo, Christopher B. Krebs. With twenty-three chapters written by renowned scholars, this Companion provides an accessible introduction to Caesar as an intellectual along with a scholarly assessment of his multiple literary accomplishments and new insights into their literary value. The Commentarii and Caesar’s lost works are presented in their historical and literary context. The various chapters explore their main features, the connection between literature, state religion and politics, Caesar’s debt to previous Greek and Latin authors, and his legacy within and outside of Latin literature.
The Cambridge companion to theatre and science /edited by Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr. The Cambridge Companion gives readers a sense of this dynamic field, using detailed analyses of plays and performances covering a wide range of areas including climate change and the environment, technology, animal studies, disease and contagion, mental health, and performance and cognition. Identifying historical tendencies that have dominated theatre’s relationship with science, the volume traces many periods of theatre history across a wide geographical range
The Cambridge companion to twenty-first century American fiction /edited by Joshua L. Miller. The Cambridge Companion offers state-of-the-field analyses of contemporary narrative studies that set the terms of current and future research and teaching. Individual chapters illuminate critical engagements with emergent genres and concepts, including flash fiction, speculative fiction, digital fiction, alternative temporalities, Afro-Futurism, ecocriticism, transgender/queer studies, anti-carceral fiction, precarity, and post-9/11 fiction.
The Cambridge companion to twenty-first-century American poetry /Timothy Yu. This collection highlights the new, multiple centers of gravity that characterize American poetry today. Essays on African American, Asian American, Latinx, and Native American poetries respond to the centrality of issues of race and indigeneity in contemporary American discourse. Other essays explore poetry and feminism, poetry and disability, and queer poetics. The environment, capitalism, and war emerge as poetic preoccupations, alongside a range of styles from spoken word to the avant-garde, and an examination of poetry’s place in the creative writing era.
The Cambridge companion to William Carlos Williams /edited by Christopher MacGowan, College of William & Mary. This Companion contains thirteen new essays from leading international experts on William Carlos Williams, covering his major poetry and prose works – including Paterson, In the American Grain, and the Stecher trilogy. Authors examine Williams’s relationships with figures such as Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and H.D. and Marianne Moore, and illustrate the importance of his legacy for Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Robert Creeley, Robert Lowell, and numerous contemporary poets. Featuring a chronology and an up-to-date bibliography of the writer.
The kingship of Jesus in the Gospel of John /Kim Sehyun ; foreword by Peter G. Bolt. This book studies kingship with reference to the Johannine Jesus.
The new Cambridge companion to T.S. Eliot /edited by Jason Harding. Drawing on the latest developments in scholarship and criticism, The New Companion opens up fresh avenues of appreciation and inquiry to a global twenty-first century readership. Emphasizing major works and critical issues, this collection of newly commissioned essays from leading international scholars provides seven full chapters reassessing Eliot’s poetry and drama; explores important contemporary critical issues that were previously untreated, such as the significance of gender and sexuality; and challenges received accounts of his at times controversial critical reception. Complete with a chronology of Eliot’s life and work and an up-to-date select bibliography.
The Routledge handbook of translation studies /edited by Carmen Millán and Francesca Bartrina. The Routledge Handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art account of the complex field of translation studies. Written by leading specialists from around the world, this volume brings together authoritative original articles on pressing issues including: the current status of the field and its interdisciplinary nature the problematic definition of the object of study the various theoretical frameworks the research methodologies available. The handbook also includes discussion of the most recent theoretical, descriptive and applied research, as well as glimpses of future directions within the field and an extensive up-to-date bibliography.
The universe next door: a basic worldview catalog /James W. Sire ; foreword to the sixth edition by Jim Hoover. For more than forty years, The Universe Next Door has set the standard for an introduction to worldviews. This sixth edition uses James Sire’s widely influential model of eight basic worldview questions to examine prominent worldviews that have shaped the Western world, critiquing each worldview within its own frame of reference and in comparison to others.
The York Nativity play: the traditional Christmas play /from the York cycle of Mystery plays performed from about 1300 to 1580 ; adapted by Tony Gray. This ‘new’ play is about 700 years old. It was first written down about 1340 A.D. when it was part of The York Cycle of Mystery plays. Thereafter it was performed every year for 300 years.
There shall be no night /by Robert E. Sherwood. The play is set in Finland between 1938 and 1940 and concerns a Finnish scientist and his American-born wife both of whom are reluctant to believe that the Russians will invade their beloved Finland. But with the final advent of Finland’s Winter War with the Soviets, their son Erik joins the Finnish army, and the scientist joins its medical corps.
Three Spanish sacramental plays: For our sake, by Lope de Vega. The bandit queen, by Josef de Valdivielso. King Belshazzar’s feast, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. Translated and with an introd. by R. G. Barnes.
Bivocational and beyond: educating for thriving multivocational ministry /edited by Darryl W. Stephens. Bivocational and Beyond provides a wide range of perspectives on faith, leadership, and learning to equip pastors and theological educators for a future in which multivocational ministry may become the norm.
Challenging bias against women academics in religion /edited by Colleen D. Hartung. Challenging Bias Against Women Academics in Religion presents biographies about women in academia who study, research, and teach about the world’s religious and spiritual traditions. It addresses the question of why so many women academics, who are themselves producers of secondary sources, are absent as biographical subjects in secondary literature generally and on digital knowledge platforms specifically. Authors variously challenge the exclusionary assumptions that underlie systemic bias in the production of secondary and tertiary sources about women. This critical engagement disrupts sourcing and writing conventions that support and perpetuate bias and creates the opportunity for more expansive and inclusive biographical narratives about women.
Jesus according to the New Testament /James D. G. Dunn. In this small, straightforward book designed for a lay audience, Dunn focuses his fifty-plus years of scholarship on the central question posed by the New Testament–who is Jesus? Dunn surveys the New Testament books from Matthew to Revelation, exploring and unpacking what they actually say about Jesus. Jesus according to the New Testament points to the wonder of those first witnesses and enriches our understanding of who Jesus is to us today.
The armchair economist: economics & everyday life: revised and updated for the 21st century /Steven E. Landsburg. Landsburg shows how the laws of economics reveal themselves in everyday experience and illuminate the entire range of human behavior. Why does popcorn cost so much at the cinema? The ‘obvious’ answer is that the owner has a monopoly, but if that were the whole story, there would also be a monopoly price to use the toilet. When a sudden frost destroys much of the Florida orange crop and prices skyrocket, journalists point to the ‘obvious’ exercise of monopoly power. Economists see just the opposite: If growers had monopoly power, they’d have raised prices before the frost. Why don’t concert promoters raise ticket prices even when they are sure they will sell out months in advance? Why are some goods sold at auction and others at pre-announced prices? Why do boxes at the football sell out before the standard seats do? Why are bank buildings fancier than supermarkets? Why do corporations confer huge pensions on failed executives? Why don’t firms require workers to buy their jobs? Landsburg explains why the obvious answers are wrong, reveals better answers, and illuminates the fundamental laws of human behavior along the way. This is a book of surprises: a guided tour of the familiar, filtered through a decidedly unfamiliar lens. This is economics for the sheer intellectual joy of it.
