Arjo Klamer is Professor of Cultural Economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Dean of the Academia Vitae.

• 1. The Strangeness of the Discipline 2. Economics is a Conversation or Better, a Bunch of Conversations 3. What it Takes to be an Academic Dog or the Culture of the Academic Conversation 4. It’s the Attention, Stupid! 5. A Good Scientific Conversation, or Contribution Thereto, is Truthful, Meaningful and Serves Certain Interests 6. The Art of Economic Persuasion: About Rhetoric and All That 7. Why Disagreements Among Economists Persist, Why Economists Need to Brace Themselves for Differences Within their Simultaneous Conversations and their Conversations Over Time and Why they May Benefit from Knowing about Classicism, Modernism and postmodernism 8. How and Why Everyday Conversations Differ from Academic Ones and How and Why Academic Conversations Clash with Political Ones

'This is an engaging book, in which the author's long association with, knowledge of, and affection for his field easily shows through. Summing Up: Highly recommended.' - A. R. Sanderson, University of Chicago, February 2008 issue of CHOICE.