The Price of Everything

The best attempt to teach economics through fiction that the world has seen to date.

Have you ever wanted to give a friend a book that explains the main virtues of economic freedom in a dramatic way that is accessible to a broad audience? Russell Roberts’s latest novel, The Price of Everything, is the book you want. That’s right: I said ‘latest novel.’

This book is the third foray into the world of economic fiction for Roberts. In terms of prose and content, it is also his best effort. . . . In this new book, set on and around the Stanford University campus, Roberts bundles several clever insights about everyday economics with the overriding theme of prosperity and economic growth, and pulls it all off with warmth and plenty of heart.

A remarkable use of parables and dialogues to convey economic intuitions. This should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand this branch of applied philosophy we call economics.

[A]n unusual and wildly enjoyable book.

This is a great story about human, social, and economic betterment brought about by the forces of spontaneous coordination. It’s also about justice and there’s a warm ending. Read and enjoy.

Improbable as it might seem, perhaps the most important fact for a voter or politician to know is: No one can make a pencil. That truth is the essence of a novella that is, remarkably, both didactic and romantic. Even more remarkable, its author is an economist. If you read Russell Roberts’s The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity you will see the world afresh.

The Price of Everything [is] Russ Roberts’ latest didactic novel. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. I thought his other fictional attempts to teach economics were decent, but in my opinion this one represents a real step up.

Don’t be put off by the title, you just might not be able to put it down. Its brilliance is in its simplicity, and it’s now the first economics book I recommend. Yes, Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose and Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom are still the cornerstones, but easy to read? No.

[T]he novel is eminently readable. And if you did not know anything about how the American system works you would come away from reading it better informed.