The Real Price of Everything: Rediscovering the Six Classics of Economics

by Michael Lewis (Editor)

Six classic works on economics—with commentary from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Big Short and Liar’s Poker. In books like Liar’s Poker and Moneyball, Michael Lewis has given us an unprecedented look at what goes on behind the scenes on Wall Street. Now he takes us back across the centuries to explore the classics that created and defined not just Wall Street, but the entire economic system we live under today. Brought together with Lewis’s illuminating editorial commentary, they form an essential reference for any student of economics—in fact, for anyone who wants to understand the market forces and government policies that have shaped our world, and will continue to shape our future. Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus (1798)Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by David Ricardo (1817)Selections from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (1841)The Theory of the Leisure An Economic Study of Institutions by Thorstein Veblen (1899)The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes (1936)

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Business, Finance, History, Politics, Philosophy

2596 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Michael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
Lewis was born in New Orleans and attended Princeton University, from which he graduated with a degree in art history. After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015.
Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one on the New York Times Bestsellers Lists, including his most recent book, Going Infinite (2023).

Reviews

[Mark Yong · Rating 3 out of 5]

The works themselves are great.
The problem is with the format in which they're presented.

There are no individual contents pages for each work, and no header telling you which book and chapter you are at.

At over 1400 pages the book is a monster, which makes getting lost easy when there's nothing but page numbers and author name at the top. This is a problem with The Wealth of Nations especially, with multiple books.


The sheer size and weight of the book are a problem in themselves, although some may like that.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've really enjoyed multiple Michael Lewis books, and especially found him likeable and very smart when he came to Microsoft many years ago to speak about the book that he'd recently gotten published. I count "The Undoing Project" as one of my top ten most enjoyable books to read. This book, however, let me down. There is nothing that Lewis did wrong, nothing about his writing that sucked, nothing promised that wasn't delivered. The truth is, I didn't "read the fine print" before buying this book. I assumed, and everyone knows what happens when you assume. Had I known that this book contains the full text of various economists, and that Lewis's own writing on those texts and their respective authors constitutes a very small fraction of the page count, I would have checked it out from the library instead. I'm old enough that I have to economize my time reading and I don't want to read the entire magnum opus of Keynes. I wanted to get Lewis's take on all these classics, and felt that I got an appetizer rather than an entree for each. So, three stars because there is far too little Lewis, which I suppose is a very positive negative review.

[Alina Amin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm finiiiiiiiiished!

[Erin Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's Lewis, hey

[Bruna Menegatti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a compilation of extracts from 6 of the most renowned economists who served as base for today's economical theories (Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Mackay, Veblen and Keynes). A massive book and rather a time-commitment, but contains the most relevant bits and pieces from the most cited literature in economics with a brief introduction to each author and their most important contributions to the field.
One should note that entire chapters from the original books make up the compilation (rather than having shorter specific paragraphs only), which by no means makes it an easy read. It would have been interesting to see a more in-depth analysis of the content exposed in relation to modern economics, although this would habe been impossible to accommodate in one volume alone.

[Peter Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I did not read all the classics in this book. I was expecting this to be more Michael Lewis writing about these books and how they relate to today's world, but he only writes short intros to the original works which are included here in full. His descriptions are informative enough and probably pretty necessary considering The Wealth of Nations is over 1000 pages here and can be a slog to get through (I tried). If you're interested in reading these formative classic economic works with some modern perspective from Lewis, then this is the book for you. But if you're more of a Lewis fan and were just wondering if you needed to read this to get through his entire bibliography, I would just skip it.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only value in this book is by having all 6 books adjacent to each other, do that when, e.g., Keynes is dunking on Ricardo late in his "General Theory," you know what he's talking about. Another e.g., everyone seems to know what Smith did and didn't day, so it's great to compare that to the recollection of what he actually said.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

very long read, contains long excerpts from other older books actually whole chapters, such as Adam Smith Wealth of Nations. Of course, written long time ago, so the english is not modern. Stopped reading after the author's intro plus a few pages into Adam Smith.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The intros from Michael Lewis were cogent and easy to read.
The books by the 6 great economists.. were not...
I got 50 pages through Adam Smith, and then less through the rest.
Maybe 50 pages of Keynes.
Hard reading.
Retreating to fiction for a bit now!

[Joshua Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought the ebook not realizing how freaking MASSIVE this work is. It was definitely worth the read, though. Lewis offered solid insights on all six pieces contained in the book.

[John Anderson]

Did not have the energy nor love for Econ that I thought I had. Maybe some other time.

[Matthew Matheson]

6 classic econ books