Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

Green Grow The Dollars by Emma Lathen (NY: Pocket Books, 1982)

Previously I reviewed a book by two male economists, called Murder at the Margin. Well, they weren’t the only economists who wrote mystery books! A much more famous mystery series was written by a dynamic female duo who met as students at Harvard University. Martha Henissart went on to become an economist.  Mary Jane Latsis went on to become an attorney. Together they wrote twenty-four books under the pseudonym of “Emma Lathen”. (from LATsis plus HENissart) Continue reading →

Murder at the Margin by Marshall Jevons (Princeton University Press, 1978)

Can economics and English ever mix? I switched from English to Economics in graduate school for a purely economic reason. The tenured professors in the English Department were so incensed with their graduate students going on strike for higher wages that the profs abolished the only source of financial aid in the department…awards for teaching freshmen English.

At a mixer for new grad students in Economics at UW, I was teased by an upperclassman, “Oh, you mean English majors can add?” In one of my many classes where I was the only woman, my professor whipped out a poem by an author I’d never even heard of, and looking straight at me, read it aloud. He concluded with a smile and the statement, “Even we economists can appreciate great literature.”

So it was with some delight and skepticism I picked up a copy of Marshall Jevons’ book, “Murder at the Margin,” the first known mystery by an economist. Both feelings were richly rewarded.
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Last night I caught an early show of a new documentary film with the Yes Men.

Who are the Yes Men? Well, they are kind of like the Blue Men, only they don’t work for a corporation; they pretend to represent corporations, government agencies, and other powerful institutions that the Yes Men don’t like.

Unlike Michael Moore who plays a buffoonish bad boy giving the bigwigs a hard time, the Yes Men become the bigwigs. The two of them in this film give everyone they come in contact with an Alice in Wonderland tour of what the world could be if it weren’t so out of whack. They take dry financial concepts such as “hazard” (a bad thing that could happen) and “risk” (the likelihood that the bad thing could happen) and show us through their own experiences what these concepts really mean to us as human beings.
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