Customer Reviews

The Ultimate Field Guide to the US Economy: A Compact and Irreverent Guide to Economic Life in America, New Updated Edition

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

The Field Guide is a pointed critique of the US economy, and in fact IS well referenced with clear citations for all its statistics (see pages 213-222). Most of the information is culled either from government sources or from the corporations themselves, as printed in publications like Business Week, Fortune, and the New York Times. And when there are comparisons made they're relevant; for example, comparing industrialized nations and developing countries exclusively.

What's best about the Field Guide is that it's a clever resource for fighting off all those people who would tell you "I don't believe it." As the title would suggest, The Field Guide provides you with the tools so you too can find and understand economic information yourself. From pages 194-212 you'll find the 'Toolkit', which has neat things like explanations of how to collect your own information and make graphs. Fun stuff.

The Field Guide helps fight the obfuscation of corporate shills.

This is a fun and often surprising look at the U.S. and world economies done in a fun USA TODAY graph style. The range it covers is so wide that I'm often left with further questions about the stats, but that's to be expected. This is a great handbook and jumping off point. Who would think a book on economics would be a page turner?

Most damning statistic: our country's per person spending on health care is higher than all those with socialized health care, yet our life expectancy is one of the lowest of industrialized countries.

Readers seeking an introduction to capitalistic theory and its relationship to the U.S. economy can find better works elsewhere. This book doesn't purport to provide that kind of analysis.

But if readers want a book that provides facts on how capitalism effects individuals in the U.S. across a variety of racial, gender and class lines, then it is hard to imagine a better book than this one. The book is an easy read, but it is by no means simplistic. It is easy because capitalism isn't nearly as successful at providing a fair and equitable standard of living as is commonly held. The book proves that point quite well. Readers might be surprised to discover facts in this book about the U.S. economy that they've never read before. It's a real eye-opener.

I love this book. It's a terrific, easy-to-read source ofinformation about the US economy, giving careful attention to economic realities for women, people of color, poor people, and everybody else whose individual net worth is under Bill Gates' $90 billion. (It's estimated that the cost of providing education, health care, adequate food and safe water for all the people of the earth is about $40 billion - I read it in the Field Guide!)

This book is an outstanding resource on the economics of everything from elections to health to the environment to gender to the global economy, kept reader-friendly by cartoons, swift wit, and a great guide to sources for more information (complete with web addresses!).

Let me preface this review by stating I'm am not a republican or hard-core conservative in any other way(I have often voted for Democrats). However, I do have a very good understanding of economics, and I find it very hard to believe that the authors of this book are economists. Economics is a great interest of mine, and I can say with certainty that 90% of economists would tell you this book is a farce.

I happened upon a quote from this book while looking up other information, found it interesting, and bought the book on impulse. Now I'm embarrassed to have supported the authors/publishers with my $15.

First off, the authors of this book are relatively upfront about their strong liberal leanings and that this book does have an agenda - I'll give them credit for that, but for little else.

Rather than inform and educate, this book uses the high level of economic ignorance of the general public as a tool against them to mislead the reader into sharing the opinion of the authors with misleading information. This book presents statistics, and then leads the user to specific reason for those statistics that supports the authors agenda, rather than considering other possible, and usually more plausible, reasons.

This book does not even come close to painting a complete picture - on the contrary, it only uses information that supports their agenda. One of the basic premises of this book is that the wealthy are lucky and that the poor are unlucky - rather than mentioning hard work as a means. This book pressumes that people are entitled to certain things, rather than that they should actually earn them. It portrays that under the guise of "fairness".

I'll give you an example of the type of logical reasoning this book uses. To be clear, this is my example, but the logic used duplicates the logic behind many statistics in this book, I'm simply using the logic in a matter that is more obviously wrong:
The NHL has aproximately 20 black players. The entire leagues has aproximately 900 players, meaning that just over 2% of the players are black. Approx 13% of the population is Black, therefore the NHL is holding back black players. This type logic pressumes a single reason for a statistic rather than considering other possibilities, such as, in this case, the fact that ice hockey is simply not very popular in black culture (for whatever reason).

Ultimately, if you encounter this book in an economics class, you should leave that school immediately, as you are clearly not getting a good education. If you really want to learn more about economics, you'd do better to pick a book at random.

Field Guide to the U.S. Economy blends humor with an observation of the U.S. economy, examining complex economic scenarios and putting together the collective work and humor of over forty progressive economists affiliated with the Center for Popular Economics at Amherst University. Light reading, filled with important points, and ideal for the non-specialist general reader.

For an economics professor, this is an excellent choice to use along with a more traditional economics text, such as Schiller or Mankiw. The viewpoint of the authors is left-leaning, which balances out the conservative/mainstream view of most popular economics textbooks. It is a good resource for student papers or presentations, and I have encouraged students to look for both updated data and data that supports a more conservative view. There is a web site that goes along with the book and has suggestions for using it in a class. The only downside of using the Fieldguide is that the numbers go out of date, and I hope a new version is issued in the near future.

"Economics" in the US is usually code for "why 'free enterprise' is better than the tooth fairy." I get sick of so-called economists and many other social scientists telling us that being "objective" is somehow possible and desirable. Whenever someone in the U.S. says they are being "objective" about a subjective subject like economics - they really mean they are for the dominant capitalist status quo. This book makes no bones about being critical and NON-objective - and its refreshing and much needed. I teach high school economics and I can't get kids to put this book down. It may not be scholarly work - but it makes important HUMAN issues graphically clear in its pages. Every American should read this book. Excellent stuff. Bravo!

This book is a childish attempt to get people upset about corporations and all the economic "unfairness" there is in the world. This is a book pushing a Liberal/Socialist agenda and it selectively picks out statistics that help it advance that agenda. For instance, statistics are compared across countries without any effort being made to control for important differences such as education, age of population, etcetera. And count yourself blessed if you can find a reference to where these quoted statistics are taken from.

As an economist I am amazed by this. There are rational, economic based arguments for Liberal causes, yet this book opts to present facts out of context instead of trying to encourage readers to think and formulate ideas. Of course this shouldn't surprise anyone given it's a comic book published by Popular Economics (as oposed to unpopular) and reviewed favorably by the self-annointed economist Noam Chomsky.

My econ professor consistently instructs us to approach the topic of economics from an objective standpoint. This is the most slanted economics text I have ever read. No way people actually use this book in a classroom setting! I got through half of the book before I had to toss it out because it totally distorts the rational economic theories that I have learned throughout college. I am neither liberal or conservative, but a realist who understands enough about economic history to know that there is more than the one-sided arguments that are presented here.