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

I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done

going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. Today is October 1st, 2024, and before introducing today's guest,

I want to let listeners know that we're doing an econ talk book club.

Tyler Cowan and I are reading life and fate by the silly Grossman and we will be

releasing a conversation about the book in late November.

So if you'd like to read in advance along with us, feel free to do so.

You can find links to the paperback and the Kindle Edition on the website for this episode.

I want to say it's not an easy book to

read for starters it's 872 pages. It has dozens of characters and they're hard

to keep track of and I'm a big fan of the

Kendall edition because when you forget a character you can search and go back and

find mentions of that person or remember them more easily. If you're using the

paperback I suggest the method I suggested for in the first

circle, which is when you first come upon a character, go to the list of characters and put

the page number where they're first introduced, and that will help you go back and find more about them.

Now I know that doesn't make it sound so appealing.

On the other hand, life and fate may be the finest novel of the 20th century. It is an incredible panoramic view of the

Soviet regime, the Nazi regime, life during wartime, life under communism, life during the Holocaust, the power of freedom and human will,

the importance of kindness, it's really an extraordinary, incredible book, which I recommend.

I started it. I read the first hundred. incredible book, which I recommend.

I started it.

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