Economics For Dummies [Paperback]

Having accumulated several of the "for Dummies" books over the years, I find that they offer a great base knowledge of information on a wide variety of subjects and are very useful as a reference. That being said, some topics are a little too "meaty" to simplify so easily ... and I would have to include economics as one of those topics.

Although a business management degree required me to take several courses in economics over 20 years ago, I was well aware then that the subject matter was far more complex and deep than any of the overview courses I took. Needless to say, only the most basic economic principles have stuck with me over the years. Fast forward to today, with the economy being such an important issue in our lives, and ECONOMICS FOR DUMMIES seemed logical as both a refresher course and a reference. While I thought the presentation of economic s was as good as any of the "for Dummies" books, I quickly understood the reason I never retained the old college course material in the first place ... the subject matter is simply tedious. Face it, economics is a specialized and involved field of study that requires an attention span of more than a passing interest. In other words, economics is not for dummies at all.

What I like about ECONOMICS FOR DUMMIES is the standard "Dummies" format with the icons in the margins that allows the reader to distinguish what material is important to remember from the material that is superfluous. There are plenty of real-life scenarios presented to further illustrate the various economic concepts. What gets complicated is that the foundation of basic principles is compounded by so many intervening variables that the material may quickly overwhelm a reader. The real-life scenarios are helpful, but the speedy progression of economic concepts can render the reader lost in a sea of graphs, charts and economic vernacular. In other words, a person completely unfamiliar with economics may find the onslaught of such complicated, and quite frankly, boring subject matter a turnoff. I venture to say that the book would be better served if presented in smaller doses ("Supply and Demand for Dummies", "Macro-economics for Dummies", "Recession for Dummies", etc.) rather than a condensed overview of the entire realm of economics. Regardless, the book DOES provide an decent overview of economics and how it relates to the world today (meaning a lot of time is spent covering inflation and recession) in as simplified a manner as possible (no small feat). At the end of the book, the author provides an interesting list of economic myths that should be very enlightening to most readers.

The true value of the book, however, may be as a quick reference tool or resource to disseminate and somewhat understand what is being reported on the news, day in and day out ... after all "it's the economy, stupid". While most of us generally like to read a book from start to finish, there are some books that are best served as a reference to be pulled from the shelf when a question needs to be answered ... in that case, this book is invaluable.

Had I read Economics for Dummies before I took the Econ 101, the class would have made much more sense. I finally understand how the government puts money into the economy, why many stimulus measures may not work at all, and the futility of price supports. While my huge Econ textbook contained arcane terms and copious footnotes, it's nice to know that the basic concepts of economics depend on neither of these. I suspect the author of having conservative leanings, and I suspect that some of his arguments are either oversimplified or have another side not presented here, but for the modest price of this book, I certainly gained insight for evaluating the political fray which is currently taking place and really obtained more useful information than I gained in the $1,000 class. (This book was provided to me by the Amazon Vine program, but I also bought a copy for my Kindle; every time I had a moment to read the free copy, I found it in my husband's hands! Oh, by the way, much as I love my Kindle, this is not a good book to read there. Increasing the type size does not increase the size of the formulas, leaving them very difficult to read.)

I picked this book up because I'm constantly barraged by the media and politicians on their political takes of the economy. Democrats believe that bottom up works and republicans believe in supply side. I wanted to get away from the power driven hype and reestablish the sliver of knowledge gained in my college micro and macro course study.

My verdict? Certainly this book takes you back to school and requires some dedication to obtaining its concepts. I was expecting more of a high level approach but found that it's significantly detailed in concepts with charts, graphs, and formulae. It's not a casual read and I will admit to skipping to topics of interest to prevent being overwhelmed by topics i didn't have relative references to. I find now that I use it as a reference to topics to better understand what I run into. QE2 is no longer a ship to me.

i did like the end of the book in which the author covered the bubble and financial crisis. He does so without coloring it with politics and evenly details aspects that impacted the crisis. It's no longer effective to just demonize Wall Street, Main Street or the Government. All three's impacts were reviewed in a way that helps understand without pushing a bias. Good book, I'd recommend it. If your ego won't let you carry a dummies' book, get the Kindle version :)

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