Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

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Today is November 4th, 2024, and guest is Economist, author, podcaster, and blogger Tyler Cowan of George Mason University.

This is Tyler's 19th appearance on Econ Talk. He was last here in November of 2023, discussing who is the greatest economist of all time. Our topic for today is

Vassili Grossman's masterpiece, Life and Fate. We will minimize spoilers, but I'd encourage

you to read the book before listening, if that's your habit. As I've suggested, you may want to

read this on the Kindle, which makes it a little easier

to follow the characters because it's easy to search for them if you forget who they are.

This episode is also available on Tyler's podcast, Conversations with Tyler.

Tyler, welcome back to Econ Talk.

Thank you, Russ.

Is it a spoiler to tell them who won the war in the Battle of Stalingrad?

I was thinking of that.

I think we can reveal that.

Okay, that's fine.

Let's start then.

You have some introduction.

Well, I wanted to just say a little bit about Grossman and the book, very briefly.

...