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An interesting and readable guide to a key notion in modern economics – markets – comes from John McMillan, professor of economics at Stanford University in California. In Reinventing the Bazaar (W. W. Norton, $15.95/£11.99) he sets out to show that markets are an inevitable and desirable part of life, and how theorists interpret their mechanisms. Markets are, of course, a cultural artefact, in spite of McMillan’s subtitle – “A natural history” – because they depend entirely on the politics of ownership. An engrossing read.