Everyday Economics Made Easy: A Quick Review of What You Forgot You Knew

by Grace Wynter

This easy-to-understand and fully illustrated handbook teaches essential economic thinking, topics, and concepts so you can confidently apply economic reasoning in daily situations and discussions.

For many of us, the discipline of economics conjures up the idea of an inaccessible, challenging, and complicated realm. In reality, we are embedded in our economies and therefore need to think and engage along economic lines and applications every day--in the public square, in our own households, in the workplace, at the supermarket, at the bank, technologically, globally, and environmentally. Economic insight and knowledge can easily and quickly solve a curiosity or problem, avoid a minor catastrophe, or even help provide empirical support for your own economic "hunch" or theory. With Everyday Economics Made Easy, economics comes down from the ivory tower and to the forefront of your consciousness, teaching the most important basic economic concepts, history, debates, areas, and ways of thinking about economic issues--all while fostering your own ability to personalize the discipline of economics to help you to become your own favorite economist.

Using an encouraging voice throughout, each chapter is devoted to a specific economic topic and explains the underlying questions, approaches, and analysis in a simple and easy-to-understand way. Step-by-step instructions on a wide range of topics are enforced with sidebars on how to engage, interact, think through, and resolve economic issues and questions satisfactorily, focusing especially on the following topics:
The scope, purpose, and various definitions of economics
The tools and theoretical approaches economists use
The rich history of economic thought and its continued relevance today
The contributions of notable economists
The areas of microeconomic, macroeconomic, and international economic analysis
The way economics conceptualizes and accounts for the environment (or fails to)
Complete with graphic fonts, colors, diagrams, and illustrations, Everyday Economics Made Easy is a calm and patient tutor to help you appreciate, theorize, debate, and logically construct the how and why of economic thinking and analysis, its importance, and its application to common, experienced, daily economic-related dilemmas. Build your skills as an economist with confidence in no time at all!

Get a quick review of everything you forgot you knew with the Everyday Learning series from Wellfleet Press. Need a refresher course in topics like grammar and philosophy? Then let these handy reference books be your sidekicks on your journey to higher learning. You'll learn about timeless global topics, as well as the thought leaders responsible for some of the greatest contributions in the worlds of science, art, and more. Packed with useful information, these portable books are perfect for commuters who want to jump-start their day with useful and fun facts. With the Everyday Learning series, you'll be an expert in any field in no time.

Other titles in this series include: Everyday Economics Made Easy, Everyday Grammar Made Easy, Everyday Mathematics Made Easy, Everyday Philosophy Made Easy, and Everyday Spanish Made Easy.

Genres: Finance

146 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 5, 2022

Reviews

[Rosh ~catching up slowly~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book reminded me a lot of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s 'Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.' Before the author and his team jump up in excitement (or wonder in confusion at what could connect economics and astrophysics), let me reproduce an excerpt from my review of the above book:

“The book aims at providing a “foundational fluency” in astrophysics. It certainly succeeds in that. But you must understand that this is Astrophysics 101, not Science 101. There’s a lot of “foundational fluency” that you already need to have in physics and astronomy before you pick this up. In other words, keep in mind that the title is not 'Astrophysics for Beginners' but 'Astrophysics for People in a Hurry'.”

I can simply tweak a few words of the above paragraph and give you the review for this book. In short, this is not Economics 101. Now comes the long version of my review.

Economics primarily assumes rational behaviour from an irrational species and is based on “all things being equal” in a dynamic environment where hardly anything is equal. Despite this, economics is probably the only social sciences to have as widespread a relevance and impact in the real world as the core sciences. As such, we cannot ignore economics and everyone needs to have at least some knowledge of it.

The book aims at providing “economic concepts in small, easily digestible pieces” and this aim is almost entirely met. (The problematic word is “easily”.) The content is really good and comprehensive. Beginning from basic economic systems and concepts such as demand and supply; the development of economics through the decades through the viewpoints of prominent economists; the practical side of economics such as taxes and its social impact; to more macroeconomic issues such as recessions and economics policies, the book tries to cover as much of economics as possible in order to maximise your utility. (See what I did there? 😛)

As someone who is more than familiar with the basics and even some advanced economics, I found the book quite interesting. It is very practical and sometimes, even humorous. There are plenty of quotes, “quick tips”, and trivia to lighten the topic and increase the impact. I enjoyed these additional info boxes even more than main content.

However, I wonder if the book justifies the claim of ‘everyday economics made easy.’ A major part of the main content (that is, not counting the add-ons such as trivia, brief bios of economists, quotes and the like) is very dense. The problem begins right at the start. When you want to spread an everyday understanding of a subject feared by the general public, you don’t begin with a historical listing of famous people associated with the subject and their economic theories! That’s the easiest way to either put people off the book or scare them away from the subject itself. The book doesn’t ease into day-to-day economics but dives in at the deep end and for most of the journey, stays at the deep end. There are case studies to help you understand the topic better but these too will work only if you have a certain grasp over the essentials.

In other words, I don’t think this book can work for a person who knows nothing about economics. It will click better with those who have already studied economics at some time in the past, have forgotten the basics and are looking for a resource to refresh their knowledge.

The last two years have been like the world has never seen. While humankind has been through many pandemics before, this was the first pandemic of the information age, where fake news went viral and genuine news was left unseen, where panic caused people to buy toilet paper in reams and fear made many stay away from vaccines. It is at such a juncture that economics and economic thinking is more necessary than ever before. This book does help in that aim, but as I said, you need to have grasp over the subject first.

I wish the approach of the main content of the book would have been more layperson-friendly, such as in “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” or even in “The Undercover Economist.” The content in the text boxes is outstanding but a book can’t be read for the added textboxes alone. The tagline of the book—“ A Quick Review of What You Forgot You Knew“—makes its intention clear but I wonder how many will read that tagline before picking up the book as the title claims something else.

3 stars.

My thanks to Wellfleet Press and NetGalley for the DRC of “Everyday Economics Made Easy”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.



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[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyday Economics Made Easy by Grace Wynter is a clear and concise overview of the basics of economics.

Many readers have a vague idea of what qualifies as economics, and even those of us who took a couple courses long ago probably have more misunderstandings than understandings of what the term encompasses. This book starts with a basic history to help lay the foundation then, in very accessible language, covers the basics that every citizen should have some grasp of.

In addition to simply defining and illustrating concepts, Wynter also makes some of the connections with our lived lives, particularly how strategies, policies, and theories can affect various groups. This is not economics in a vacuum, this is an attempt to arm the citizenry with a basic knowledge so we can better make future decisions, both personally and politically. But don't get me wrong, this is not a biased politically slanted book, it is a balanced book so we might have a well informed electorate making future decisions.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants a better understanding of economics, whether as a refresher or an introduction. Any areas that interest you can be further researched by using the bibliography or doing keyword searches from the text.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I liked the conversational and sometimes witty writing. I had previously taken economics courses (many decades ago) and the book is a great refresher. I suspect that it would make a very good introductory text, but I can’t really speak to that. The book is concise; it did not cover anything in great detail, but does have a bibliography. The book also has a handy glossary. I enjoyed the discussions of the social impact of economics - including gender, racial discrimination, and climate change. Overall, this is a great read. Thank you to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Wellfleet Press for the advance reader copy.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've taken to reading business news recently with everything that has been going on over the last few years, and economic weekly magazines but need a little more help in understanding the articles, so thought I would start with this book when it came up on Netgalley for review.

Everyday Economics made Easy is divided into three main sections: history, basics, and micro/macroeconimcs.

It's an interesting book that explains things well and has certainly increased my understanding of the economic world around me.

I received this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review.

[Richard Archambault]

Too simplistic, to superficial, too American. Stopped reading halfway through as I found it pretty boring. Maybe useful for someone new to the topic, so I'm not rating it.

[Jarrett Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

lovely book with a smooth breakdown flow that covers the fundamental

[Abu Iyas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good and quick refresher...

[Thomas Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the most part this book takes a deep and wide-ranging subject which of course is economics. The author points out early on that the intent of this book is not to cover economic theory, concept and chart but to use as a reference book so that when you hear a topic or phrase you can look it up. In my opinion most of this book makes it easy to understand most of the topics, I did find some of the discussions on curves had spent some time to understand if at all. I would definitely recommend this book. Thank you to Edelweiss and Quarto for an ARC for a fair and honest review.