On the shelf

Economics as engrossing reads.
Russell Roberts, AM’78, PhD’81, an economics professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an NPR commentator, has written two novels that double as classroom reading. The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism (Prentice Hall, 1994) is modeled on that holiday classic, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life and has sold 50,000 copies, most for classroom use at 95 different colleges, including the University of Chicago. Roberts’s latest, The Invisible Heart: An Economics Romance (MIT Press, 2001), combines a love story—between a high-school economics teacher and his colleague in the English department—with lessons on corporate responsibility and consumer safety.

"In Sam’s nightmare he was back in college, taking an English class. He did have his pants on; he had not slept through an exam. But it was still a nightmare. Sam was taking a class on the novels of Ayn Rand and Charles Dickens. He was making a presentation to the class on why capitalism was good for the poor. Every time he made a point, one of his classmates would interrupt him and accuse him of being heartless."