Book Reviews
“Economics in Plain English” by David A. Mayer Book Review
Is it just me or did everyone suddenly become an economist over the past half a decade or so? I joke — but the truth is that economic literacy is becoming increasingly important in today’s world. Enter the new book Economics in Plain English by author David A. Mayer. Featuring more than 300 terms, throughout this book, Mayer aims to give readers a better idea about what the jargon terms they might hear from entrepreneurs, newscasters, and politicians really mean.
In the interest of full disclosure, the publisher, Simon & Schuster, provided me with a copy of this book for free. However, I received no other compensation and the opinions in this review are entirely my own.
As I learned, this book is actually a new entry into a series, following Personal Finance in Plain English by Michele Cagan, which was released in March. Also, while researching the book, I found that there’s also an audiobook version. But, while this is usually my preferred “reading” method, it’s not one that I’d recommend for this particular title (and I’ll explain a bit on why later). Instead, I was able to enjoy the hardcover edition — which is honestly not a bad deal with a list price of $16.99.
Anyway, each of the 10 core chapters of Economics in Plain English covers different economic ideas. In addition to The Basics (yes, that’s literally a chapter title), the book discusses Economic Measurement, Market Failures, Growth & Inequality, and more. Each chapter also kicks off with a paragraph or two about the overarching topic before diving into the definitions.
From there, you’ll be introduced to several economic terms in dictionary style. Under the term itself, you’ll find a short definition, followed by three additional segments:
- What it is
- How it works
- How it is used
For the “what it is” section, Mayer provides a fairly basic one-sentence description of the topic. Then, “how it works” elaborates on that and often provides some examples. Lastly, “how it is used” isn’t just a rehash of the above but, instead, puts these concepts in context, including real-world applications.
Personally, I thought that this structure worked quite well. To my slight surprise, I rarely felt as though the content of any given segment in a glossary term was redundant among the others. That’s not an easy feat to pull off, so kudos to Mayer for navigating this dilemma so deftly. In particular, as I alluded to, I was most impressed with the “how it is used” sections, which regularly proved to be the perfect punctuation on a section and drilled home the lesson of each entry.
Having said that, when compiling a book of this nature, there are a few different organizational options to choose from, each with its own pros and cons. In the case of Economics in Plain English, Mayer (or the editors behind this book and series) opted to arrange each chapter’s vocabulary entries alphabetically. That certainly makes logical sense but is unfortunately not without its own drawbacks and quirks.
For example, in the chapter dedicated to Degrees of Competition, you’ll end up learning about a geographic and governmental monopoly before reaching a regular monopoly, discover horizontal mergers but have to wait a bit before finding out about vertical ones, and encounter imperfect competition separately from perfect competition. Honestly, I don’t know how I’d have done things differently in order to avoid these minor oddities, but they did stick out to me while reading the book linearly.
Of course, if you don’t feel like reading the book cover to cover, there is also an index where you can look up certain terms and flip to the relevant pages. Personally, I can see this being useful in the future when I want to refresh my memory on specific topics.
On that note, while I suspect that I’ll be returning to Economics in Plain English from time to time as a resource, it’s not the type of book I plan to re-read in its entirety. In fact, I’m not even 100% sure I was meant to do so in the first place. Regardless, the book definitely delivers on its goal of educating readers on economic concepts and terms by making them intellectually accessible. For that reason, if you’re curious about economics and want to sharpen your knowledge, I think this book is a great place to start.
“Economics in Plain English”
“Economics in Plain English” Delivers on Its Promise
4
Formats
Hardcover, Kindle, Audiobook, Audio CD
Number of pages
208 (hardcover)
“Economics in Plain English” by David A. Mayer seeks to make economic terms and concepts more digestible for everyday Americans – and it succeeds. In this book, you’ll find more than 300 terms, each defined and broken down into “what it is,” “how it works,” and “how it is used.” While the book can technically be read cover to cover, some may prefer just to use it as a resource for looking into specific concepts. Either way, it’s a useful, well-written guide.
Pros
- Features more than 300 glossary terms and definitions
- Each term is given additional context and application
- An index can help readers return to term they needing brushing up on
Cons
- The alphabetical arrangement means that some like-terms are separated or “out of order”
- Some may find it dry as there’s no narrative and few if any anecdotes
Author
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