THE BOOK BIZ Making Nice To Make Sales
In his column in The New York Times (NYT ), Paul Krugman is one of President George W. Bush's most outspoken foes. "Heck of a Job, Bushie," the Princeton University economist taunted on Dec. 30, accusing the President of breaking the law and misleading the public. But Krugman is far more generous to the President in his introductory textbook, Economics (Worth Publishers), which came out on Dec. 22. There he praises Bush's advisers for supporting "aggressive" measures to fight the 2001 recession. Photos contrast a confident Bush with a squinting Herbert Hoover, whose policies worsened the Depression. Far from picking fights with Republican academics, Krugman writes that "media coverage tends to exaggerate the real differences in views among economists."
The homogenization of Paul Krugman may illustrate a basic principle of economics: The customer is always right. Textbooks are chosen by professors of all political stripes. Krugman says in an interview that he and his wife and co-author, Robin Wells, were "extremely careful" to be evenhanded.
So far, Krugman says, there's no evidence that buyers have been turned off by his column. Good thing. His competition includes two of Bush's former chief economic advisers: R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University, who has a new textbook, and best-selling N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University, whose fourth edition arrives in March.
By Peter Coy -- Jim Devine "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin