Economic Book of the Year - 1st place at the prestigious International Book Fair in Frankfurt
The second, greatly expanded and deepened edition of the author's first book was published in 2011 by the prestigious Oxford University Press. Since then, the book has reached readers around the world.
The economics of good and evil has been translated into 14 languages (including Chinese and Korean) and has been a success with foreign critics (Financial Times, New York Times, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) and academics. It became a bestseller in Germany and Switzerland immediately after its publication. It has also been successfully staged for Czech and foreign audiences (London, Helsinki, Luxembourg, Bucharest).
The economics of good and evil shows how colourfully our ancestors were able to think about property, their own utility and social welfare. The author takes the reader on an adventurous journey to the roots of our civilization and uses the examples of the ancient Sumerians, Hebrews, ancient thinkers and the philosopher Descartes to illustrate how inspiring it is to trace the transformations of human inquiry from the perspective of economics when set in a broader context.
In the author's interpretation, economics is a beautiful humanistic discipline whose roots and connections go much deeper than one can imagine today. But the book is more than a probe into the history of economic thought. It shows how many fresh and surprisingly relevant ideas we can find in the heritage of ancient civilizations. And most importantly, how convincingly they can be used to go against the tide and heretically break down the stereotypes we still work with today - as everyday people and as scientists or economists.
Sedláček gives economics a new dimension, reach and scope, and connects it with philosophy, art, religion and contemporary filmmaking - breaking it out of the captivity of technical analysis alone. In the first part of this book he looks for economics in myths and in the second part for myths in economics. Both are, thanks to the author's insight, erudition and readability, a unique opportunity to get to know our time, ourselves and our relationship to material and spiritual things.
