A Reader’s Guide to Socialism
Socialism was written originally as three separate, smaller and more manageable books. It received a contract offer from Palgrave Macmillan, one of the world’s great publishing companies and probably the leading publisher of works on economics. But PM’s intention was to sell each of three volumes for about $120 to the leading university libraries. It’s not likely that many individuals would be prepared to pay c. $360 for the entire work.
So I self-published the book as one volume with Xlibris to sell in paperback for $23.99, or for $34.99 for the hardback edition. The pdf copy is available for $3.99 online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Since you can get it as one volume for a small fraction of the price it would have been for three volumes, you could afford to skip parts of it. This encyclopedic work (as described by one reviewer) may be more extensive than your reading time, but no problem! In the old days when people bought the 
Encyclopedia Britannica they didn’t usually read every topical entry. If you want to gain knowledge about socialism without an encyclopedic effort, you can purchase this book at the favorable price, and by reading the final, summary chapter you get the bottom line on every topic. All the conclusions and takeaways are provided in that single chapter. For the more enthusiastic, thorough reader, you can go back to the relevant chapter to explore the evidence, the sources, the logical development of arguments, the empirical proof, and the details.
Here is a brief reader’s guide for a more bite-sized approach to this material:
- Read the preface and the back cover to learn how and why the book was written.
- Glance through the Table of Contents for the range of topics covered.
- Read the first, introductory chapter for the definition of socialism.
- Read Chapter 2 on markets and how they function. This tells how healthy economies are supposed to work.
- Get the big picture by reading the final chapter (22), which gives a summary and overview of all of the chapters, explaining why each was written and why it is important.
- You can also read the synopsis at the beginning of each chapter. On a single page you get the arguments and the main conclusion in summary form about the chapter.
- Go back and read any or all of the chapters that interest you most. I think the latter part of chapter 16 is especially important, since it treats socialism in Obama’s America.
Note: This book assumes no prior knowledge of economics; the target is simply the literate reader. It is written without scholarly jargon and reviewers have declared it thoroughly understandable.