There's a Price to Pay

Eduardo Porter likes to talk trash. The New York Times reporter opens his new book by examining the price of garbage in different societies. From there, he goes on to expose The Price of Everything: Solving the Mystery of Why We Pay What We Do. Porter doesn’t just explain the price of everything—he shows that everything has a price. “It is by looking at how we price things that we gain an understanding of how we behave,” he says. By scrutinizing our conscious and unconscious decisions, he comes to some startling revelations about the role of price and its sometimes-disturbing implications.