Hill and Wang, which has published a number of non-fiction graphic novels explaining among other things The United States Constitution and the 9/11 Report, will publish Health Care Reform, an explanation of the recently passed Health Care bill by one of the plan’s chief architects, MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber.  Gruber’s book, which is tentatively titled, Health Care Reform, is slated for publication later this year.

 

Gruber, who also helped craft Mitt Romney’s Health Care Plan for Massachusetts, told the Boston Herald, “I’m going to use the facts to tell the story.” When first approached by Hill and Wang Editor Thomas LeBien, Gruber was reluctant to attempt to translate the 2,400-page bill into the graphic novel format, but his family convinced him otherwise.  “I just wasn’t sure this would be useful enough. Then my wife and kids said, ‘You’re crazy. You’ve got to do this.' So I decided to give it a shot. My family made me realize that there is such a misunderstanding of the bill and that it’s important to explain why we need this, and what it does. I’ve found that when people understand it, they like it.”

 

But Hill and Wang is hardly the only publisher exploiting the comics medium’s inherent ability to educate and clarify. Round Table Press has published a number of business-related graphic novels under its Smarter Comics imprint including an explication of Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, which is illustrated by Shane Clester. Anderson’s book, which expands on a 2004 article in Wired, demonstrates how commerce in the Internet Age affords considerable opportunities for dealing with niche products as well as with mainstream hits. Anderson shows how Amazon with its huge list of available titles generates business from titles that few if any bookstores carry, and how Netflix was able to out-compete Blockbuster by providing customers with access to a much wider range of DVDs.