He says he set out to write a basic but modern handbook of wealth that packs the following message: “This is wealth, and this is what you do to get it.” On the day that Prof. Harrison visited the offices of thefrontpageonline.com, he was musing about books that are quoted more frequently than read. For better or worse, but not for richer or poorer, “Plutonomics” someday may qualify for that uncrowded pedestal that is oddly prestigious. Each page makes it successively clearer that Prof. Harrison was dashingly loyal to the First Commandment of new authors, write for a broad audience. “Originally,” he says, “I had intended it to be mainly for students and theorists. But when I think about it, everybody, to a degree, is a student of real wealth.”

Postscript

“Plutonomics” seeks to plough a new path of economic thinking for those willing to shatter the mold and step down a lightly explored highway. “In terms of finding a reader who would be receptive and would benefit from my theories,” said Prof. Harrison, “my book probably is not for someone who is invested in doing things a certain way because that is the way it’s always been done. A lot of what we think of as ‘always been done’ really only covers the last 70 years.” He means to be a thinker who alters the way we strategize.

Next: Coming face-to-face with Prof. Harrison’s innovative theories. See plutonomics.com.