A guest review of What you Need to Know about Economics by
George Buckley and Sumeet Desai
Phil Thornton, Clarity Economics
This may seem an odd way to begin a book
review, but this is not a book that readers of this website will need to read.
It is, however, exactly the book they should
give to non-economist friends and acquaintances who ask them obvious questions
such as “What is that you do, exactly?” “What has economics ever done for us? “
and “Why did you fail to spot the credit crunch?”
As can be guessed from the title this is
effectively a primer in economics for non-economists who are interested in the
state of the world financial system but don’t plan to go to night school. It is part of a series of “What you need to know” books that have
covered areas such as leadership, business and strategy and follows a
straightforward structure.
When it comes to “plain English” economics,
there are many similar books that are structured by answering specific
questions. This can often make it harder for a non-specialist to understand the
big concepts.
This book does not make that mistake, instead
opting for eight chapters on growth, inflation, employment, trade, money,
central banking, public finances and housing. Each chapter begins with a page of bullet
points titled ‘What’s it all about?’ and then goes methodically through the
issue. Paragraphs are nicely spaced apart and the pages illustrated with
easy-to-understand graphs, pie charts and flow diagrams.
The text is also broken up by potted
biographies of luminaries such as Milton Friedman and JM Keynes and some of
their best quotations.
Each chapter ends with a further reading
section and a one-paragraph section on the “one thing” you should take away
from that section.
While aiming to be clear and easy to
understand, it does not shy away from technical issues. The chapter on
inflation includes a section on demand-pull versus cost-push inflation with
line graphs that would not look out of place in an Economics 101 textbook.
The writing is clear, as one would expect
from the authors: Buckley is chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank while Desai is
an economics commentator who used to be chief UK economic correspondent at
Reuters. But is not simplistic and is happy to explain complex concepts in a
straightforward way.
books aiming to bring economics to non-economists – and perhaps comes at the time
it is needed most.
A PS from Diane: previous posts on this blog have discussed popular economics books – see this one or search for 'popular economics'.