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National bestseller published in English
by Oxford University Press
ECONOMICS OF GOOD AND EVIL
The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street
TOMAS SEDLACEK
This site is run by Czech publishing house 65. POLE, which produces Tomas Sedlacek’s books
in Czech and owns the global rights on Economics of Good and Evil.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
The Economics of Good and Evil was first published in Czech original as Ekonomie dobra a zla in May 2009 and quickly became a national phenomenon. The book was the first non-fiction piece that has ever topped national annual list of best-selling titles. Over 60,000 copies were sold, while Tomas Sedlacek won various awards for his debut and pushed a debate about economics on a new level.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Václav Havel * Introduction: The Story of Economics: From Poetry to Science
PART I : ANCIENT ECONOMICS
1. The Epic of Gilgamesh: On Effectiveness, Immortality, and the Economics of Friendship / 2. The Old Testament: Earthliness and Goodness / 3. Ancient Greece / 4. Christianity: Spirituality in the Material World / 5. Descartes the Mechanic / 6. Bernard Mandeville’s Beehive of Vice / 7. Adam Smith, Blacksmith of Economics
PART II : BLASPHEMOUS THOUGHTS 209
8. Need for Greed: The History of Want / 9. Progress, New Adam, and Sabbath Economics / 10. The Axis of Good and Evil and the Bibles of Economics / 11. The History of the Invisible Hand of the Market and Homo Economicus / 12. The History of Animal Spirits: The Dream Never Sleeps / 13. Metamathematics / 14. Masters of Truth / Conclusion
EXTRACT
1. The Epic of Gilgamesh: On Effectiveness, Immortality, and the Economics of Friendship
The Epic of Gilgamesh dates from more than four thousand years ago and is the oldest work of literature available to humankind. The first written records come from Mesopotamia, as do the oldest human relics. The epic served as an inspiration for many stories that followed, which dominate mythology to this day in more or less altered form, whether it is about the motif of the flood or the quest for immortality. Even in this oldest work known to men, however, questions we today consider to be economic play an important role — and if we want to set out on a trail of economic questioning, we can go no deeper into history than this....
Read more here Gilgamesh p.19-22.pdf
QUOTES
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The more we have, the more we want. Why? Perhaps we thought (and this sounds truly intuitive) that the more we have, the less we will need. We thought that consumption leads to saturation of our needs. But the opposite has proven to be true. The more we have, the more additional things we need. Every new satisfied want will beget a new one and will leave us wanting. For consumption is like a drug.
See also the Oxford University Press website: please click here for US catalogue or here for UK.
See Hanser.de for a German edition and Studio Emka for news from Polish market.
In Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, but Sedlacek sees it as a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field’s confines and explores myths, religion, theology, philosophy, psychology, literature, and film, ranging from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to Matrix and the consumerism of Fight Club. In his thrilling, postmodern style, he asks searching “meta-economic” questions about the very soul of economics.
Deemed by experts as an impressive advance in “humanomics,” Sedlacek places the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior. His groundbreaking work promises to change the very way we think of economics and the way we calculate economic value.
No. 1 in Switzerland, No. 12 in Germany (see bestsellers ranking here)
