Thog's Guide to Quantum Economics: 50,000 Years of Accounting Basics for the Future

The previous reviews provide excellent descriptions/opinions on the book. Thog's guide is entertaining, interesting, and extremely clever. The only thing I might add is that, while the book and most of the reviews were written in 2005, it is very relevant in today's economic climate. The book makes numerous references to "Schumpeterian Gales" such as the great depression and the dotcom bubble, but it easily could have been written today and included references to the 2008 financial crisis. My favorite quote from the book was "Thog thought Thogette's idea should be called a 'stock market,' because it's shorter than 'Thogette's What x What for Just Who x Whens...'" (p. 219)

This book follows the thought processes of a group of scientists in New Mexico trying to make economics more scientific. Specifically, they are attempting to use principles from the field of quantum physics and complexity science to show how societies might evolve from simple beginnings to develop more complex economic structures like banks and stock markets. Along the way they are assisted by a fictional family of "Thogs" who have been around for some 50,000 years. These Thogs instruct the scientists on how these various institutions were initially developed. While the concepts presented here are fairly complicated, the book presents them in such a way that makes both the accounting and physics easy to understand.

This book is a "great read." It tells in a creative and charming manner the story of how accounting came to be over the course of tens of thousands of years. Accounting students will enjoy it because of it's fresh approach. But that's only half the story. At another level, there are some fairly important ideas that lie behind this book, which will be evident to all who peak into Dr. Z's backpack and read some of these pieces. By using simple examples that resemble parables, this book describes how humans devised an economic institution with powerful and far-reaching consequences. The juxtaposition of historical narrative with the ongoing experimentation in complexity science is extraordinarily creative. And, the book offers a different perspective on modern accounting standard setting in the process. In sum, I've been reading "accounting books" for 30 years, and this is an exceptionally interesting one. This is definitely worth a look and very likely a careful second reading as well.

This book is a great read. For anyone who wants to understand why accounting is very necessary. Easy to read--each chapter is short and makes a new point the reader had not thought about before.