Rent a Mankiw (Book) for the Semester

With spring semester fast approaching, the time has come to revisit a number of unfortunate but inevitable facts about life at Harvard, ranging from the dreary New England weather to the fact that some of your TFs this semester might not speak understandable English. And new classes mean that, once again, we will each have to spend a sum of cash that could probably feed a small Third World community for a year on textbooks that we'll never look at again once the semester has ended.

But wait, there's hope! Beren Professor of Economics Professor N. Gregory Mankiw stated on his popular blog that his Ec 10 textbook (along with 1,200 other titles) can now be rented from Cengage Brain, in either physical or digital form, at prices much lower than retail cost. Approximately 1,500 more titles are set to be added by July, and students can also purchase individual e-chapters as needed.

But is it really a good deal? After all, you're still spending a little more than half of the purchase price of a new copy of Principles of Economics for one that you won't be able to resell (or for the right to look at a digital version on your tiny laptop screen for a year). Maybe, if you don't mind using an older edition, you should go with the old-fashioned used book route: we found a copy of the fourth edition on AbeBooks for about $30.