With Anthropology and Economy, Stephen Gudeman has provided us with a valuable resource for teaching and rethinking the study of economic life. His book fulfils two important purposes. On the one hand, as an introductory text it successfully makes the case for economic anthropology as a discipline. Gudeman shows in highly accessible prose how surprising and illuminating the study of economic life really is, when carried out in a qualitative, open-ended and unashamedly comparative manner. For example, he explains the importance of ritual for hunters among the North American Cree, for Dobu yam farmers in 1920s New Guinea and for Iban rice cultivators in 1940s Borneo, only to subsequently show why ritual remains key for the ‘market magic’ that animates much buying and selling in the world’s most diversified economies today (pp.69–92). He also drives home the point that economic activity stretches far beyond conventionally studied market settings, and that its study must include the analysis of domestic life as well as kinship and community structures, which enable and influence commercial activity. It is particularly helpful that the author regularly intersperses his account with hypothetical interjections from a fictitious ‘over-the-shoulder economist’ (p.65), whose approaches and conclusions are contrasted to those of the book.