G'day Michael, Is Stretton's *Political Essays* (1987) available in the UK? I ask because Oz is his focus in this excellent collection of essays. But then, the issues he writes about are as central to the Pommie or Kiwi experience as they are here. His essays on 'deregulation', the damage wrought by 'sloping credit' in the context of volatile inflation (and, boy, did that one come home to roost six months later), trying to make sense of social democracy in an institutional setting that rewards desertion from principle, and the need for political self-awareness and the dangers of narrowness in economic explanation - well, they're ALL terrific actually. Something for everybody, and the sort of thing an economics teacher could use to instil the values of general knowledge, looking out the window once in a while, and applying several modes of thought to each problem. In short, the voice of the sort of public service that built a damned comfy little society (comparatively speaking, anyway) and the one we've spent thirteen years consigning to the dustbin. Methinks our order is gonna learn the hard way how much it depended on these types, and how hard it is to get their like back. Oh, well. Worse is better, right? Right? Cheers, Rob. PS. Enjoyed this little Keaneyism: "Meanwhile, that glorious exception to the otherwise universally applicable law of diminishing marginal returns, the universal applicability of marginal analysis." ---------- > From: "Michael Keaney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [PEN-L:10895] Re: Varoufakis book as course textbook accompaniment > Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 10:09:35 +0000 > > >Bill Lear wrote: > >>Folks here might be interested in Yanis Varoufakis, *Foundations of >>Economics: A Beginner's Companion* (Routledge, 1998), which I think >>might make a very useful supplement to a standard textbook. > >I would second that recommendation wholeheartedly. Varoufakis is very >readable, and is eager to engage readers in critical appraisal of the >"truths" they would otherwise forcibly digest. I reviewed the MS of this for >Routledge. > >Another MS I reviewed for Routledge, which that publisher eventually >refused, but which will now see the light of day thanks to the folks at >Pluto Press, is "Economics: A New Introduction", by Hugh Stretton. It is >being launched at this fall's European Association for Evolutionary >Political Economy conference in Prague. Further details of it can be found >at > >https://secure.metronet.co.uk/pluto/cgi-bin/web_store/web_store.cgi?sc_quer y >_subject=Economics > >It's an excellent, thoroughly heterodox introduction, quite unlike anything >I've seen before. By all means give it a look. > >Pluto is also going to publish Doug Dowd's latest, entitled "Triumph or >Calamity: A History of Capitalism and its Dismal Science". > >Michael >
