THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief Sex, Drugs & Economics: An Unconventional Introduction to Economics by Diane Coyle (Texere, 263 pp., $24.95). In her vastly amusing economics primer Diane Coyle...
...Scouting for tracts in Texas, Dollar comes into conflict with proud cattle-ranchers, whom he comes to admire...
...Dollar finds work at Global Pork Rind, a corporation that buys up land for profitable hog farms...
...In reality, her stories are made of freakish accidents, idle improbabilities, goofy names, flat characters, all buried under tedious accretions of detail...
...Coyle's efforts show enough balance that the book's back cover displays praise from both left-wing New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MIT financial engineer Andrew Lo...
...A mother's affection and attention shape all her offspring's futures, and if that affection is not present, the results are emotionally and physically devastating...
...Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Deborah Blum examines the work of psychologist Harry Frederick Harlow, whose experiments pursued the notion that a child's love and affection for its mother could be studied, quantified, and understood...
...In Love at Goon Park Blum argues we do not need to approve of Harlow's methods to appreciate what he taught us about love...
...It's too bad, for Proulx has a decent story in That Old Ace in the Hole, told through the eyes of Bob Dollar, a young man who was abandoned by his parents when a boy of eight...
...Infant monkeys abused by mechanical surrogate mothers, monkeys left alone in a box for so long they became insane, monkeys so marred by abuse and neglect they later mutilated or killed their own offspring...
...When it comes to topics like drug use and agriculture subsidies, however, Coyle isn't afraid to stake out controversial positions by taking her thinking to its logical conclusions...
...The book begins with a series of essays on economics related to "the usual titillating areas of daily life"—sex, drugs, sports, music, and food—and then runs from technology to international trade...
...There are serious themes here, but the narrative drags, and the effect produced is boredom...
...Anyone familiar with Annie Proulx will not be startled by her latest...
...Through his experiments with monkeys in the early 1970s, Harlow concluded that a baby's love for his mother is astonishingly intense...
...It turned out to be a controversial topic...
...For this, she writes, Harlow deserves the gratitude of millions of babies...
...In her vastly amusing economics primer Diane Coyle explores topics from prostitutes' wages to Japanese teenagers' fashion choices...
...In the years since, Harlow has come under attack on another front—from animal-rights advocates, who abhor his research methods...
...Critics call her work "terrifying," "spare," "of brutal beauty...
...Coyle, a former economics editor of the Independent, addresses everything from price elasticity to liquidity traps without getting bogged down in mathematics...
...Along the way, she sneaks in asides about her love of cheap wine and a hilarious dig at art-house films...
...God created women to be mothers and essentially nothing else," he wrote—which made members of the early women's movement choleric: They had just begun to emerge from their traditional roles in the home, and here was some nutty monkey scientist telling them that what they wanted would be disastrous for their children...
...But boring, it cannot be...
...Even for those well versed in the study of supply and demand, Coyle's book will provide a valuable refresher course with more than a few laughs thrown in...
...Rachel DiCarlo That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx (Scribner, 384 pp., $26...
...Great, even good, literature can be many things: sublime, inspiring, challenging...
...The book ends with a useful list of ten principles for economic thinking...
...Krugman himself could benefit from rereading the chapter on taxes...
...Blum concedes his experiments were pernicious and should never be repeated...
...Eli Lehrer Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection by Deborah Blum (Perseus, 336 pp., $26...
...Stephen Barbara...
...Who ever said economics isn't any fun...
Vol. 8 • December 2002 • No. 13
