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

economix 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)


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Comments (11)
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  • templeruins says:

    Boris John­son could do with tak­ing a read.

  • Thierry Reis says:

    I would like to know the opin­ion of an econ­o­mist regard­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of this book. It seems to me there is some risk for the lay­man read­er to begin eco­nom­i­cal edu­ca­tion through the eyes of a “free lance writer”. Is he over-sim­pli­fy­ing the­o­ries? Does he have a clear under­stand­ing on the sub­ject?

  • Thierry Reis says:

    I would like to know the opin­ion of an econ­o­mist regard­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of this book. It seems to me there is some risk for the lay­man read­er to begin eco­nom­i­cal edu­ca­tion through the eyes of a “free lance writer”. Is he over-sim­pli­fy­ing the­o­ries? Does he have a clear under­stand­ing on the sub­ject?

    • Ivar Musum says:

      I found this quote: nnu201cEconomix is a live­ly, cheer­ful­ly opin­ion­at­ed romp through the his­tor­i­cal and intel­lec­tu­al foun­da­tions of our cur­rent econ­o­my and our cur­rent eco­nom­ic prob­lems. Good­win has a knack for dis­till­ing com­plex ideas and events in ways that invite the read­er to fol­low the big pic­ture with­out los­ing track of what actu­al­ly hap­pened. Any read­er won­der­ing how our econ­o­my got to where it is today will find this a refresh­ing overview.u201dnu2013 Tim­o­thy W. Guin­nane, Philip Gold­en Bartlett Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ic His­to­ry, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

  • Thierry Reis says:

    I would like to know the opin­ion of an econ­o­mist regard­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of this book. It seems to me there is some risk for the lay­man read­er to begin eco­nom­i­cal edu­ca­tion through the eyes of a “free lance writer”. Is he over-sim­pli­fy­ing the­o­ries? Does he have a clear under­stand­ing on the sub­ject?

  • Thierry Reis says:

    I would like to know the opin­ion of an econ­o­mist regard­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of this book. It seems to me there is some risk for the lay­man read­er to begin eco­nom­i­cal edu­ca­tion through the eyes of a “free lance writer”. Is he over-sim­pli­fy­ing the­o­ries? Does he have a clear under­stand­ing on the sub­ject?

  • Eduardo Antonio Suarez Valles says:

    There is a Mex­i­can author, Eduar­do del Rio or Rius, who has a great book called econ­o­my for begin­ners in econ­o­my. It is a great book and his style is superb. He writes the book as if it were a car­toon strip in the news­pa­per with some large claus­es and many ref­er­ences in his book and involves the read­er by ask­ing rhetoric ques­tions. I will check this out but as soon as I read the arti­cle I thought about Rius.

  • Eduardo Antonio Suarez Valles says:

    There is a Mex­i­can author, Eduar­do del Rio or Rius, who has a great book called econ­o­my for begin­ners in econ­o­my. It is a great book and his style is superb. He writes the book as if it were a car­toon strip in the news­pa­per with some large claus­es and many ref­er­ences in his book and involves the read­er by ask­ing rhetoric ques­tions. I will check this out but as soon as I read the arti­cle I thought about Rius.

  • Eduardo Antonio Suarez Valles says:

    There is a Mex­i­can author, Eduar­do del Rio or Rius, who has a great book called econ­o­my for begin­ners in econ­o­my. It is a great book and his style is superb. He writes the book as if it were a car­toon strip in the news­pa­per with some large claus­es and many ref­er­ences in his book and involves the read­er by ask­ing rhetoric ques­tions. I will check this out but as soon as I read the arti­cle I thought about Rius.

  • GreenAdamSmith says:

    The Invis­i­ble Hand — from The The­o­ry of Moral Sen­ti­ments (1759)nnu201cThe pro­duce of the soil main­tains at all times near­ly that num­ber of inhab­i­tants which it is capa­ble of maintaining.nnThe rich only select from the heap what is most pre­cious and agree­able. They con­sume lit­tle more than the poor, and in spite of their nat­ur­al self­ish­ness and rapac­i­ty, though they mean only their own con­ve­nien­cy, though the sole end which they pro­pose from the labours of all the thou­sands whom they employ, be the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of their own vain and insa­tiable desires, they divide with the poor the pro­duce of all their improvements.nnThey are led by an invis­i­ble hand to make near­ly the same dis­tri­b­u­tion of the nec­es­saries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divid­ed into equal por­tions among all its inhab­i­tants, and thus with­out intend­ing it, with­out know­ing it, advance the inter­est of soci­ety, and afford means to the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of the species.u201d

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