A comprehensive and illustrated 21st-century primer on the basics of economics—if you think “monopsonies” is just the way a drunk person says “monopolies,” that subsidies are cities beneath a city, or that gross domestic product refers to the manure market, then you need The Cartoon Guide to Economics to demystify the macro and micro!

Award-winning, New York Times bestselling, Harvard-educated cartoonist Larry Gonick returns to supply his audience’s demand with a comprehensive and illustrated primer on economics.

Gonick illustrates how the seed concept of “making decisions under scarcity” blooms and branches into all of the ideas that make up modern economics—both the micro concepts that describe our everyday interactions (like rational choice, game theory, and market failures) and the macro material that rules the headlines and guides government policy (like GDP, inequality, unemployment, inflation, and interest rates).

In The Cartoon Guide to Economics, you’ll find illustrated and entertaining deep-dives into:

The birth and evolution of economics, from the gift economy of cavepeople to coinage and paper money to the digitized globalism of modern times
The basics of supply and demand explained via the all-important donut economy
The reason why having some unemployment isn’t always a bad thing (yes, really—and no, that doesn’t mean you can quit your job)
Displaying the complicated mathematics of economics with crystal-clear graphs and graphics

Gonick’s wry wit and humorous examples—coupled with his legendary cartooning skills and bolstered by the brain of Vassar economics professor Ben Ho—distill these dense and sometimes difficult topics into material that’s relatable, easy to digest, and fun to read. Students and professors, as well as the casually curious, will emerge with a deeper understanding of the core principles of economics, and Gonick will—somehow, impossibly—make them laugh along the way.

Benjamin Ho