A colleague and I were talking shop one day last spring, like econ ed nerds do on occasion, putting together a wish list for our school’s media center. Discussing books on economic issues that were beneficial either to ourselves or potentially to our students; he mentioned that at one time he required his AP kids to read Todd Buchholz’s New Ideas From Dead Economists.Over the summer I got around to reading it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a nice, easy-to-read overview on the growth of economic thought over the past 250 years. Short, witty bios of the economic giants accompany refreshing explanations and applications of their ideas. It is certainly not a groundbreaking work of new scholarship, but it is a pleasant way to gain perhaps a slightly different perspective on the concepts we teach everyday.
-Michael Melvin
