Most textbooks are cumbersome to carry, expensive to buy, difficult to read, and boring. They have no plot, no characterization, no suspense, no climax. What they have are facts. If Dragnet's Sgt. Friday were Scientist Friday, the script wouldn't be much different­ "just the facts, ma'am." Students can't escape textbooks. But like death and taxes, they are necessary evils. of old ideas makes room for new ones. Death makes room for new people and the death Taxes are the dues we pay to live in a country. Everybody gets stuck with paying some kind of dues and students are no exception. Students pay dues in the form of tuition to listen to professors lecture, and they also pay dues in what a former governor of California called' 'psychic bucks" -time, concentration, independent study, reading textbooks like this one-to come up with the correct answers to exam questions. Textbooks on economics will tell you about where our tuition bucks come from. This book is about where our psychic bucks come from and the forces that can bankrupt our psychic nest eggs.