The Great Stagnation runs through three centuries' worth of what Cowen calls the "low-hanging fruit" of economic growth: free land, technological breakthroughs, and smart kids waiting to be educated. For developed economies, he argues, none of these remains to be plucked. Yet America, Europe, and Japan have built political and social institutions on the assumption of endless growth. Cowen summarizes the financial crisis in eight words: "We thought we were richer than we were."

It's not that he disagrees with any of the better-known explanations for the crisis—easy credit, flawed ratings—it's that he sees a more fundamental problem, one that can't be fixed with regulation, bailouts, or tax cuts. Cowen thinks that now that America has used up the frontier, educated all of the farm kids, and built a couple of cars for every family, we might be done growing for awhile. The Great Stagnation is a short work, simply written. It avoids any but the most basic discussion of economics, yet also brushes lightly over all of modern history; behind simplicity in style and argument lies a lifetime of intensely productive reading.
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Cowen is still best known for the blog he shares with Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution.
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Then the financial crisis happened. "For something so fundamental to have gone wrong," he says, "my intuition and the evidence suggest that there's something wrong with the real economy as well." Maybe the two were related, he thought: What if the financial system took on so much debt because most of us assumed that growth was eternal? Cowen says he has no grand plans when he begins to write, just what he refers to as myopia. What looks strategic from the outside is just Cowen refusing to let something go.

In 2004 a reader of his blog suggested to him in an e-mail that he might be autistic. Offended at first, he applied himself to understanding the term, then decided he has what he calls an "autistic cognitive style," then wrote a book about it, Create Your Own Economy. (Cowen never sought a professional diagnosis.) He treats autism as he does the drug company cheerleaders, with neither pity nor celebration. It's not that he denies that autism exists, rather he points out that there is some joy in obsession. He describes people with autism as "infovores" who are attracted to information—the minutiae of train schedules. Or books. He mourns the coming end of big-box bookstores and the enchantment he felt circling the new release table. He goes to the public library twice a week, chasing after serendipity. He has no algorithm for finding a book. If he is intrigued, he buys. "When economists look at what other people call pathologies," he says, "they see reason, they see specialization, they see intent. They see a lot of pleasure."