Economics made interesting-book review

I recently read and reviewed Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, by Charles Wheelan. Available in paperback from Amazon. This book was timely, fun to read and eye-opening. I enjoyed it and recommend it. Herewith the entire review:

"The last few years have taught us and many of our clients, painfully, the importance of understanding money and finances. In my active bankruptcy practice, very few of my clients have this understanding. As a result, most have made unwise if not downright foolish decisions that brought them to me. Yet many avoid economics courses in college for the same reasons my children espouse: the courses are heavily laden with theory and mathematics. Looking for a solution to this, I came across Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, by Charles Wheelan, a reporter and columnist for the British magazine The Economist. Out in softcover and available at sites such as Amazon,com, this book-- fully revised and updated--is interesting, enjoyably readable, timely, and understandable. Indeed, I found it eye-opening.

The explanations are virtually devoid of mathematics and pedantics. Instead, Wheelan uses real life, practical and sometimes whimsical illustrations to make his points. His illustrations ring home. Rarely does one have to go back and reread a sentence or a paragraph to grasp the meaning.
At the same time, Wheelan avoids dogmatic recitations of theory. Indeed, a subtitle of this book could well be “Economic Theory--Warts and All”. He is refreshingly willing throughout to acknowledge and explore the limitations of economics, and the fallacies of the past. As the reader is regularly reminded, economics is a only tool for understanding what happens in our world. It does not dictate the decisions that we or our leaders make.
One of the strengths of the book is Wheelan’s understanding of the political process. For example, he shows how policies that lead to expanded trade and globalization benefit to society as a whole, but do not play well in the policy arena. This is so because the benefits are widely spread and diffuse so that no one individual or group feels them, but the corresponding pain and disruption is sharply felt by a small and often vocal group. Thus, in a succinct and pithy narrative, Wheelan explains why governments and politicians often make or are driven to decisions that are not necessarily the wisest or best from an economic perspective.
Another beauty of this book is that each chapter can stand on its own. For example, the chapter on the economics of information (subtitled “McDonalds Did Not Make a Better Hamburger”), provides by itself a very readable explanation of the real world imbalances in information that create economic and political challenges to achieving health care care reform. Likewise, the chapters on Globalization and The Wealth of Nations (or why some nations are rich and others poor) are fascinating when read by themselves.
The discussions are current and up-to-date. For example, the chapters on Financial Institutions and the Federal Reserve contain explanations for the causes of the 2007-2008 banking crisis and the issues faced and being faced by government in trying to overcome its effects and prevent such crises from happening again.
I can highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to have a better “real world based” grasp of economics and our financial institutions. In these troubled times, this is valuable knowledge, sorely lacking, but which we all need. Despite having taken several economics courses in college, I came away from the book with a broader and deeper understanding of much that I thought I knew but really did not."