The Repackaging of Tyler Cowen

In July, Plume, an imprint of Penguin, will publish the paperback edition of Tyler Cowen’s 2009 book, Create Your Own Economy. The book, however, will be released with a new title: The Age of the Infovore. The change, according to Cowen’s editor, Stephen Morrow, is a reflection of how the word “economy” has “come to have a slightly different meaning in the cultural hubbub” over the past year. When people think about the economy, he says, they think about the financial crisis. “The book,” Morrow writes in an e-mail, “isn’t about that.” In an e-mail, Cowen adds, “The rise of the infovore really is something new, and current, and the older title didn’t reflect that.”

A professor of economics at George Mason University and a prominent blogger, Cowen is an economist of the idiosyncratic, and The Age of the Infovore is no exception. The book reads like a how-to guide for coping in an era of information onslaught. Cowen’s advice: Learn from the “systematizing behavior” and “cognitive strength” of autistics, some of whom are exemplary infovores.

This insight, as Cowen explained in a 2009 essay in The Chronicle Review, has particular relevance to academe. “When it comes to the American college or university, autism is often a competitive advantage rather than a problem to be solved. One reason American academe is so strong is because it mobilizes the strengths and talents of people on the autistic spectrum so effectively.” –Evan R. Goldstein