I subscribe to the “Religion Watch” newsletter out of Baylor University but usually don’t do much more than skim it. The first entry in the June edition, though, immediately stood out to me for this excerpt:

Paul Seabright’s recent book, The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People (Princeton University Press, $35), is unique for its comprehensive treatment of the religious past and present as well as its novel use of the concept of “platforms” in explaining the economy of religion.

What a wild, depressing story. I feel like I ought to use this to teach the concept of platforms to my students—it neatly sums up the intervention in normal human activity by someone who thinks they have a buck to make.