you must buy this book: Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings by Roger Nam

The latest from Brill is “Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings” by my colleague and friend, Dr. Roger S. Nam.

Here’s the blurb:

With the growing proliferation of literature concerning the social world of the Hebrew Bible, scholars continue to face the challenge of a proper understanding of ancient Israel’s economies. Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings is the first monographic study to use an anthropological approach to examine the nature of the economic life behind the biblical text. Through Karl Polanyi’s paradigm of exchange as a methodological control, this book synthesizes Semitic philology with related fields of Levantine archaeology and modern ethnography. With this interdisciplinary frame, Nam articulates a social analysis of economic exchange, and stimulates new understandings of the biblical world.

Few people know this, but people often confuse me with Roger.

Go ye therefore and buy it!