在线阅读本书 Witty economists are about as easy to find as anorexic mezzo-sopranos, natty mujahedeen, and cheerful Philadelphians. But Steven E. Landsburg...is one economist who fits the bill. In a wide-ranging, easily digested, unbelievably contrarian survey of everything from why popcorn at movie houses costs so much to why recycling may actually reduce the number of trees on the planet, the University of Rochester professor valiantly turns the discussion of vexing economic questions into an activity that ordinary people might enjoy. -- Joe Queenan, The Wall Street Journal The Armchair Economist is a wonderful little book, written by someone for whom English is a first (and beloved) language, and it contains not a single graph or equation...Landsburg presents fascinating concepts in a form easily accessible to noneconomists. -- Erik M. Jensen, The Cleveland Plain Dealer ...enormous fun from its opening page...Landsburg has done something extraordinary: He has expounded basic economic principles with wit and verve. -- Dan Seligman, Fortune

孩子们看见别人得到的蛋糕更大，就会大哭大闹，而成年人遭遇不公平现象时，为什么就没有这么敏锐和果敢呢？ 想想看，如果你会让孩子把多余的玩具送给没有玩具的孩子，而不是那些玩具较少的孩子，那么你为什么会把福利金送给不那么富有的美国人，而不是一无所有的非洲难民呢？ 如果你会让孩子和同学之间自由地交换小花纸，而不是让老师去惩罚那些不愿意交换的孩子，那么你为什么就同意封锁某些国际贸易的渠道，强迫美国消费者只能买美国制造呢？ 本书与其说是一位父亲给女儿上的经济学启蒙课，不如说是未经世事的女儿和身为著名经济学家的父亲进行的一场关于“怎样才算公平”的对话。原来，累进制赋税、区域保护主义、政府债务计算、国际贸易获利率，这一切都不是什么玄妙的问题．用你曾经教导孩子的话问问自己，那么经济学就会由“魔鬼”变成“游戏”。

The classic of common-sense economics. "Enormously broad in scope, pithily weaving together threads from Galbraith and Gandhi, capitalism and Buddhism, science and psychology."-- The New Republic

In a sweeping narrative, the author of the megabestseller A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women who changed the lives of every single person on the planet. It’s the epic story of the making of modern economics, and of how economics rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands rather than in Fate. Nasar’s account begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing and publishing the condition of the poor majority in mid-nineteenth-century London, the richest and most glittering place in the world. This was a new pursuit. She describes the often heroic efforts of Marx, Engels, Alfred Marshall, Beatrice and Sydney Webb, and the American Irving Fisher to put those insights into action—with revolutionary consequences for the world. From the great John Maynard Keynes to Schumpeter, Hayek, Keynes’s disciple Joan Robinson, the influential American economists Paul Samuelson and Milton Freedman, and India’s Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, she shows how the insights of these activist thinkers transformed the world—from one city, London, to the developed nations in Europe and America, and now to the entire planet. In Nasar’s dramatic narrative of these discoverers we witness men and women responding to personal crises, world wars, revolutions, economic upheavals, and each other’s ideas to turn back Malthus and transform the dismal science into a triumph over mankind’s hitherto age-old destiny of misery and early death. This idea, unimaginable less than 200 years ago, is a story of trial and error, but ultimately transcendent, as it is rendered here in a stunning and moving narrative.

大黄蜂采集的花粉，用来交租的那一捧麦子，为地主耕地，与朋友轮流请客吃饭喝酒，婶婶为你做的那顿家乡美食，生日时收到的琳琅礼物…… 这些你从来没有认真想过的事情，其实都是货币。货币的形式和存在超越时空、包罗万象，而它对人类的影响更是超乎想象。但很少有人想起，货币究竟是如何在我们的生活中扮演了如此重要的地位的，这一切又是为何。 在《货币简史》中，卡比尔·塞加尔抛开了人们对货币的一般理解，引领读者进行了环球探索，从历史、经济、文化、宗教、政治、艺术、生物、神经学乃至未来学的全景视角探讨了“货币”这一极为复杂的话题。每一页都有足以让读者惊奇的有关世界经济发展的历史、事实和故事。 而更为重要的是，《货币简史》以极为新奇有趣的方式去探讨人性的本质和人们内在的思想活动，重新定义了货币给我们的社会、国家和全人类带来的真正价值、意义、影响与力量。 对任何希望了解货币如何影响这个世界的人，甚至对于任何一个有存款或者信用卡的人来说，这本书不应错过。