The Price of Everything is the name of a book I got in the mail recently from Princeton (978-0-691-13509-0). Apart from the intriguing title, the BISAC categories on the back were POPULAR ECONOMICS and FICTION. Huh?! Who could resist that?
 
Not me. I sat on the back porch one Saturday and didn’t get up until it was over. Then I went back through and made notes. Then, I decided that all of my children had to read it over summer break—required. A couple of days later, I talked about it to a friend of mine who teaches at a private middle school, convincing him that it would be a good pick for next year’s curriculum. Yes, it’s this good. I just love it when someone takes a topic that generally bores the pants off people and makes it discussion worthy.

Here’s how the book gets started:
 
Meet Ramon. He’s a senior at Stanford and a tennis star. He’s also an immigrant from Cuba, where his father was a champion and hero of Castro’s favorite sport, baseball. After the father’s death, however, the Great Leader’s favors dried up, and Ramon’s mother felt that opportunities for her son were greater in the US. Of course, after their immigration the statues of the baseball hero were pulled down and the photos erased.

So now, about twenty years later, Ramon and his girlfriend are having dinner one night and there’s an earthquake. They’re used to such things and finish the meal, but later decide that they could use a flashlight or two. They head to Home Depot. Too late. Flashlights are sold out. No worries; there’s a new gigantic everything store—a combo of Borders, Home Depot, and Sam’s Club—called Big Box. They’ll go there.
 
And they do. And in fact, Big Box has flashlights and milk and diapers and all the other stuff that other stores have run out of. BUT, there’s also a sign posted at the entrance that says: Tonight Only, All Prices, Double the Marked Price.
 
Predictably, in the parking lot there’s a bit of a riot going on, and some poor sap employee is trying to explain to the irate crowd that basically, there’s nothing he can do about it.
 
But, here’s the thing: Do they have flashlights? Yes. Do Ramon and his girlfriend buy one even though it costs double the usual? Yes.

In the checkout line, though, they hit a snag. A Spanish-speaking woman with a baby on her hip only has twenty bucks to cover her purchases—she didn’t plan on the prices doubling. Ramon gets involved. He calms the woman, passes a hat, and helps the woman check out. Then he heads outside to that poor sap employee who’s still trying to explain to masses why he’s just a poor sap. Ramon grabs the megaphone and starts to talk. “What kind of store,” he says, “decides to profit off of hungry children and a caring mother? We need to send a message…”

Stay tuned: between the Cuban story, Stanford economics classes, the Big Box boycott, and why no single person is capable of making a pencil, this is a beautiful little book about how the market economy works.

Author Robert Russell is also a professor of economics at George Mason University and research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. This is the third book where he stirs up an economic/fiction stew with his invisible hand.

Kids in Crisis: A Workable Plan for Successful Parenting
Ross Wright with Dean Merrill
B&H Publishing Group
978-0-8054-4399-8

How did this get categorized as a book about religion?

All right, I see it. I went to the publisher’s website and this is what it says:

“From its original core of Bibles, textbooks, and reference titles, B&H has blossomed into a major publisher of Christian living, fiction, homeschool, youth, history, and other categories.”

I’m sorry to tell you B&H Publishing (and even sorrier to inform the author), that you’re shooting yourself in the foot with this knee-jerk categorizing based first and foremost on religion. Just because someone mentions a Psalm, does that make it a Christian book? Because someone doesn’t mention a Psalm, does that make it a non-Christian book? Just because a book is labeled Christian, does that make it acceptable to ALL Christians. How about books (the vast majority, to put it mildly) that don’t carry the Christian stamp of approval… Are they to be considered, by Christians, as bad or corrupting or simply off topic. As a non-Christian, is it impossible to gain understanding about, say, parenting, from a book found on the Religion shelf of a library or bookstore.

Of course not.

However, I’m not going to find a book about parenting on the Religion shelf of a library or a bookstore because I’m not going to look there. I’m going to look on the Parenting shelf, or as BISAC calls it, “Family & Relationships.”

And that’s what I mean about shooting yourself in the foot. Kids in Crisis is an interesting, thoughtful, and useful book based on experience, no matter what your thoughts on faith, and it’s destined for a quiet and uncommented death unless someone, like me, picks it up and reads it for the title instead of shelving it according to a rigid category stamped on its backside.

So, got that out of my system. Let’s talk about the book. As the parent of two ex-teens, believe me, I’ve been to the Parenting section of my library looking for hints on how to deal with -- even understand -- crisis.  Theirs and mine.

Here’s a question for you, then. Say your teenager comes home, alcohol on his breath, car keys in his hand. He’s left the headlights on, so you go out to turn them off, and discover the front fender smashed in. You march back inside, only to find him passed out and insensible to your calls. In the morning, to make matters worse, he won’t get up to go to school. He’s too tired.

Honestly, what’s your first reaction?

Honestly, mine was to shout and threaten, followed closely by slam, rattle, bang, etcetera.

It was almost always completely useless.

So right, say the authors. There is no quick fix (i.e. drugs and beatings won’t help). “If force could solve our issues with difficult kids, we would have achieved family peace a long time ago.”

The authors liken a child in crisis to a steel bar, and they note some of the different “hammers” families use -- like grounding and time-outs -- to reshape the steel bar. The problem is, that to shape steel, you need heat and pressure and time. Bashing the bar on the door isn’t going to do anything but create dents.

 “Discipline only works when you have total power and control,” say Wright and Merrill. And after a kid is about two years old, you do not have total power and control unless you’re willing to maim, imprison, or kill you kid for his misbehavior. Rules alone don’t work, they say; your job isn’t to beat the child at his own game, it’s to “organize the match and keep it flowing within proper boundaries.” To do this you need relationship and rules.

The authors quote Josh McDowell, a youth speaker. “Rules without relationship is a jail. Relationship without rules is a zoo. Relationship with rules if a home.”

And here’s the gist of the argument in Kids in Crisis: that discipline in the sense of overpowering a child does not have any real goal in sight beyond the immediate one of obedience. That a farsighted goal, and one that most parents truly desire for their children, is “emancipation” not rank obedience. Parents want their children to be able to be in control of themselves when they grow up -- to do the right thing because they want to not because they’ve been told to.

How do you achieve that? Read the book. Wright and Merrill have some very interesting things to say about what works, what doesn’t, and signs to watch out for.

Ross Wright is CEO and executive director of Hope & Home, a Christian foster care agency. Dean Merrill is a child psychologist and author.