I have loved Infinite Summer. I am on for Gravity’s Rainbow, probably in September, as many of the infsum alums are talking about. Somewhere in the mean time I have signed up for a completely different kind of group reading project- call it a spontaneous economics education, with participation.
My dear friend Aaron is starting a reading group for Samuel Bowles’ Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution. If that sounds like a textbook title, that’s because it is. But this textbook is a bit different. It’s real writing (oh thank god) and it’s challenging many of the fundamentals of a field that has recently tried to drag the whole world to Hell. Or so I’m told, since I haven’t read it yet. I am looking forward to reading it, finding out more. My future plans include arguing about how ignored principles of social psych, clinical psych, and neurology actually interplay with the economy, posting ignorant and pleading questions about bits of calc I’ve forgotten or never learned, and comparing Bowles’ examples to class/SES examples I’ve seen or studied.
I totally want vast numbers of other people to sign up. If you’re reading this, that means you. This will be great brain calisthenics, and fun for the whole family, if the whole family kind of likes economics too much.
We don’t have a start date quite yet, but Aaron is talking a chapter every week, or possibly every two. Doable!