About Tim Harford’s book, The Undercover Economist, I write,

I am tempted to review it as if it were a textbook. Not because it resembles the freshman textbooks that are commonly used today, but because it resembles what I believe such books ought to be.

…The traditional freshman economics textbook says little or nothing about economic growth and development, asymmetric information, and tactical price discrimination. Harford covers those important topics, while omitting the usual long, boring, and not-so-enlightening discourse on cost functions and industrial organization.