Emily at Powell’s and I have been e-mailing back and forth. Turns out I wasn’t the only person who wanted to feature The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor–And Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!
by Tim Harford.
Both the publisher and the distributor for the book got slammed with orders, and are hurriedly printing more copies! (The book is being featured in promos for this coming weekend’s C-Span2 / BookTV.org.) Powell’s nabbed five copies this morning which Emily promises you’ll get at the promised 30% off. More are coming to Powell’s, and you’ll be put on a waiting list if you don’t get one of the last five copies.
Here’s the link to my original story about this intriguing book by a Financial Times columnist who helps everyday people figure out the guerilla marketing techniques of Whole Foods, Starbucks and Amazon that make us tend to spend more than we knew we were — along with my ode to Emily’s excellent customer service, which is such a rarity in today’s Internet businesses.
I don’t know enough about it to nominate it myself. But, if a bunch of us read it, maybe we should think about making it official.
Katie, please read the reviews at Powell’s and Amazon … it does sound like it’d be very instructive for people not sophisticated in economics — because it’s a fun read too — but he is a bit of a free market guy, from what I gathered from the reviews. I don’t know if that’d be a drawback to a reading experience or not. I often read contrarian things just because they teach me stuff too.
And hi! 🙂
Ah, well too bad. I somehow missed the free-market pro-Chinese-sweatshop part.
I would kind of like it if we found something that focused on the economy, though.
I’m still not seeing any discount on this book; is there a code we need to enter?
Sorry about that. I’ve e-mailed Emily and the Orders Dept. at Powell’s.
I think it got messed up because they were out of stock temporarily, and posted their “check for availability” image, etc….
I checked orders last night. I cannot see who orders the books, btw. But I did see that someone ordered the book, and got it for $18.20 new.
Emily assures me that the discount is back up.
The book is now on back order, so you can place an order at the discounted price and it’ll be sent to you the minute it’s in!