The Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume 1

November 9, 2009
As a study aide, if you can get past—or roll with—the often-precious humor presented by humorist/Ph.D. Bauman, this book is well organized and direct, using its overviews to deflate some of the pomposity that surrounds economic theory. While pro–free trade, the book regards the theories it presents with a slight grain of salt, giving the reader an even broader view of economic history, with the trends that worked short- and long-term. Often, though, this is almost as tedious as an economics textbook—only those who are assigned a class in microeconomics might find some enjoyment in this book, a potential respite from their dry assignments. Also on the negative side, the drawings seem to be flat blobs. For those required to study the subject or already familiar with it, this has some value as a colorful brush up, but the merely curious may struggle.

January 1, 2010
Barging in on Larry Gonicks seeming monopoly, Klein and Bauman serve up a similar blend of humor and solid instruction on a topic everyones supposed to know something about (besides history, Gonicks covered chemistry, computers, physics, the environment, statistics, genetics, and sex). Kleins zippy drawing looks like Gonicks, especially in its scribbly treatment of the figures hair, though his preferences for relatively thick lines and bare-bones perspective (one item in front of another against distant or no backdrop) also conjure the work of the marvelous New Yorker cartoonist Lou Myers (19152005). Within three parts on The Optimizing Individual, Strategic Interactions, and Market Interactions, and explaining such bedrock economic concepts as risk, Pareto efficiency, game theory, auctions, supply and demand, and margins, Baumans text, delivered by three figures whose lab coats and experimenters clipboards suggest theyre not just economists but scientists (and constitute a red flag to those who think social science is an oxymoron), bears out his self-characterization, the worlds first and only stand-up economist. Probably the least dismal treatment of the dismal science ever.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)