Book brief: The Undercover Economist
So, over the last two weeks, I finally had time to read a book. Yay for lunchbreaks.
The book was Tim Harford’s The Undercover Economist.
Not much time to comment, and honestly my brain has probably forgotten most of it by now but I’ll say that it’s a great sort of layman’s intro reader to application of basic economic theory. If you enjoyed Freakonomics, you’ll probably enjoy this. The only real similarities are that both books pare economics down in such a way that it becomes more palatable to the common reader. So maybe I should say – if you are interested in Economics, but don’t have the time for a serious study, this is a nice read.
I wasn’t too fond of Freakonomics, but I did like Tim Harford’s book. There’s an even simpler reader on economics in Charles Wheelan’s Naked Economics. I also hear that Steven Landsburg’s The Armchair Economist is a pretty good read along the same lines.
guess that means i have to read this book then huh? I’ll look into it, and the ones mentioned above by mr. belen.
I enjoyed the factoids and quirky angles taken by the Freakonomics authors, and their blog is full of entertaining stuff.
The sub-genre of armchair/newb-economics looks to be growing rather quickly, and providing for some nice light reading.
I read a book a while back that wasn’t bad too…I think it was called New Ideas from Dead Economists or something like that.