The History of Economics & Economic Theory Explained with Comics, Starting with Adam Smith

“Every­one has ques­tions about the econ­o­my. I start­ed look­ing for the answers in eco­nom­ics. I found enough insights to get me inter­est­ed, but I could­n’t seem to make the insights add up. I went back to the orig­i­nal sources, the great econ­o­mists, and start­ed to see a big pic­ture. And while the whole pic­ture was com­pli­cat­ed, no one part of it was all that hard to under­stand. I could see that all this infor­ma­tion made a sto­ry. But I could­n’t find a book that told the sto­ry in an acces­si­ble way. So I decid­ed to write one, in the most acces­si­ble form I knew: comics.”

Thus begins Michael Good­win’s new book Economix: How Our Econ­o­my Works (and Does­n’t Work) in Words and Pic­tures.

The book cov­ers two (plus) cen­turies of eco­nom­ic his­to­ry. It starts with the Phys­iocrats, Adam Smith and the­o­ret­i­cal devel­op­ment of cap­i­tal­ism, and then steams ahead into the 19th cen­tu­ry, cov­er­ing the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the rise of big busi­ness and big finance. Next comes the action packed 20th cen­tu­ry: the Great Depres­sion, the New Deal, the threat from Com­mu­nism dur­ing the Cold War, the tax reforms of the Rea­gan era, and even­tu­al­ly the crash of 2008 and Occu­py Wall Street. Along the way, Good­win and the illus­tra­tor Dan E. Burr demys­ti­fy the eco­nom­ic the­o­ries of fig­ures like Ricar­do, Marx, Malthus, Keynes, Fried­man and Hayek — all in a sub­stan­tive but approach­able way.

As with most treat­ments of mod­ern eco­nom­ics, the book starts with Adam Smith. To get a feel for Good­win’s approach, you can dive into the first chap­ter of Economix, which grap­ples with Smith’s the­o­ries about the free mar­ket, divi­sion of labor and the Invis­i­ble Hand. Economix can be pur­chased online here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in a Free Online Course

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Intro to The Invis­i­ble Hand and Oth­er Eco­nom­ic Ideas

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)