My review of Russ Roberts’ excellent economics novel, The Price of Everything is in the latest issue of Regulation. Roberts is definitely growing as a novelist. I like it better than The Invisible Heart, which I liked better than his first novel, The Choice.

The following paragraph tells about one of my favorite parts of the book:

There are other nice touches. One of my favorites is Lieber’s story of a family friend who put 20 years of his life into producing a medical device that made him rich. Lieber makes clear that the way you get rich in a free market is by producing something people really want. Why did they want this medical device? Because it blasted the plaque from people’s arteries, making open-heart surgery unnecessary. In the previous year, the device had helped about 4,000 people. But then the man found out that he had liver cancer and a life expectancy of only a few months. He was distraught. His children were grown and he had hardly ever been around; his wife had left him. I don’t want to give away the story — it surprised me and I want you to have the same surprise. But what happened next was a wonderful, loving, and totally believable way of helping the man see just how important his life had been.