Demand peaks for details of coming depression

It is said that history is written by the winners, in which case Vox Day is writing the history of the Second Great Depression.

The remarkable thing is that he managed to describe many of the events before they happened, as the electronic version of his book, "The Return of the Great Depression," published by WND Books in October 2009, is today the No. 1 Economic History best-seller on Kindle.

The WND columnist's book ranked ahead of books written by some of history's most famous economists, including F.A. Hayek (No. 2), John Maynard Keynes (No. 6), Ludwig von Mises (No. 8), and the Nobel Prize-winning Paul Krugman (No. 23).

Priced at only $1.99, "The Return of the Great Depression," has been a top 10 economics best-seller for more than a year.

When asked why the Kindle version was priced so low, Day responded with the self-deprecating humility so familiar to the thousands of readers of his daily blog, Vox Popoli.

"You can charge $10 for an ebook if you're an Ivy League professor and you put your book on the curriculum. And if you've got a Nobel Prize too, you can get away with charging $11.99. But if you happen to be a random superintelligence who merely dabbles in the dismal science, you're lucky if you don't have to grab people on the street and pay them to read it. Anyhow, I think it behooves an economist to understand the concept of price elasticity."

As it happens, "The Return of the Great Depression" already is on the curriculum at a number of major universities.

The book covers both economic theory and recent economic history, explaining the reasons for the dot-com bomb, the financial crash of 2008, and the ongoing global economic contraction in Day's intelligent, but relentlessly irreverent style.

Already, many of the events predicted in the book have taken place since its date of publication, from the Irish meltdown to the second collapse of U.S. housing prices.

Praised by academics, investors, and financial laymen alike, "The Return of the Great Depression" is a must-read in today's increasingly troubled times.

In his book, he warns:

The possibility that it could be 2032 before the economy fully recovers;
The ominous similarities between the American economy of today and the Japanese economy of 20 years ago;
How Obama's stimulus plan was actually smaller than Hoover's – and likely to be just as ineffective;
How both Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes got economics wrong.