The Green Apron Monkey discovers Moe's wonderful, wonderful used book store:
green apron monkey: January 2004 Archives: Kylee has shown me Moe's books in Berkeley. It's several stories of fantastic used book store. It had been so long since I had seen an economics section full of books that I really wanted to read.
I talked myself out of Mankiw & Co. seminal work on Macroeconomics . . .and Bhagwati's slim pamphlet on protectionism. I did pick up some cheaper fare; Capitalism and Freedom, David Warsh's book on economic complexity, part Skidelsky's (mysteriously retitled) Keynes biography and Fareed Zakaria' s book on American empire. Maybe I'll start enjoying doing economics again.
He should have picked up Bhagwati: it's great. And I thought that Skidelsky's retitling of volume III of his Keynes biography was well understood. The subtext of the British subtitle, "Fighting for Britain" was "Fighting Against the United States." Not the message you want to send with your subtitle if you want to sell books in the North American market. "Fighting for Freedom" is much better.
Posted by DeLong at January 22, 2004 01:43 PM | TrackBack
Also: Adam Smith, *Lectures on Jurisprudence* (which I almost got but I'm holding out until I finish *Theory of Moral Sentiments*); Henry George's *Progress & Poverty*; and two or three copies of T.W. Hutchison's *A Review of Economic Doctrines, 1870-1929*.
Oh, stop staring at me. If you're interested in the rise and fall of marginalism, it's a really alluring book.
Posted by: James R MacLean on January 22, 2004 02:27 PM"Fall of marginalism"? I missed that...
Posted by: Brad DeLong on January 22, 2004 02:37 PMWell, I mean, marginalism definitely was the school of thought that was displaced by the Keynesian multiplier idea. The proximate adversaries of the new thinking were people like A.C. Pigou, von Hayek, and various other marginalists. It seems to me there was a definite flight away from the cherished premises of marginalism that accompanied the adoption of Keynesian ideas in econ departments after WW2.
Is this mistaken?
Posted by: James R MacLean on January 22, 2004 02:48 PMMoe's really is the best used book store in the world. Especially for economics. Any other bookstore, you check out their economics section (if they have one) and it's all "How to make a million dollars risk free" and "The coming class warfare in America" - i.e. business and Marxism.
I got two textbooks there dirt cheap (like
Obstfeld and Rogoff for 15$!), several volumes
of the Palgrave series (on GE and Money),
von Neumann and Morgenstern's classic, one Krugman
and one Krugman and Helpman and some book on
History of Economic Thought and all of it for less
then a hundred bucks.
In fact I need to get myself down there again
soon. Thanks for the reminder!
Tangential, but Moe's shows up briefly in The Graduate: http://www.norcalmovies.com/TheGraduate/tg06.jpg
This caught me by surprise in a recent DVD viewing because I had previously thought none of the Berkeley scenes were shot in Berkeley. I think I must not have watched it since moving to the Bay Area.
Is Hoffman in Cafe Med, or is it some other nearby cafe?
Posted by: Paul Callahan on January 22, 2004 03:24 PMRandom plug inspired by mention of his name: David Warsh, the great economics columnist formerly of the Boston Globe, now posts his column weekly at EconomicPrincipals.com. Well worth reading.
Posted by: alkali on January 22, 2004 04:23 PMIt's the Med. That was my bedroom window above the Moes sign. For some reason, I can't now imagine why, I went to classes that day rather than watch the show.
Posted by: Tom Hunt on January 22, 2004 06:38 PMThis east-coaster who grew up near Berkeley misses Moe's a lot; also Shakespeare and Co. (-- There is a bookstore in NY called Shakespeare and Co. but it pales in comparison.) Berkeley is the place to be for used books and other mind altering substances.
Posted by: Jeremy Osner on January 23, 2004 07:56 AM