Theory of International Politics

I was talking to an international relations grad student last week, and he told me that what I was saying was (a) old hat, and (b) deeply confused, and that if I wanted to at least put together a less confused version of my old hat idea I ought to read Kenneth Walz's Theory of International Politics. So I looked it up on Amazon.com and was ready buy it until I saw that it costs over seventy dollars. Today, Henry Farrell posts on the subject of the work's extraordinary price, offering what strikes me as the rather naive remark: "It's not so expensive because there's low demand - every graduate student in international relations has to read it."

There's the rub. One unfortunate fact of life is that it's often all-but-impossible for a lay person to read books that are considered "must reads" among academics precisely because graduate students literally must read them, creating an inelastic demand curve and sky-high prices that send those of us without access to a university library system scurrying to pick up something else. On a related note, I see that my uncle Paul has produced a textbook priced at an astounding $410.00 -- just $328 used! -- showing that economists know how to price-gouge better than weak-kneed political scientists (though perhaps Professor Walz is just demonstrated strategic restraint).