economics-textbook

This is a terrific book--one of my top favorites. It is the story of Keith Stewart--a working class hobbyist and writer for "Miniature Mechanic" magazine--who circumnavigates the world to fulfill his role as trustee for his niece's inheritance. Stewart discovers that, through his magazine articles, he has a world-wide following of readers eager to assist him with his task: to recover a box of diamonds which sank with his brother's sailboat in the South Pacific. I first read this book when I was a teenager and have re-read it a number of times since (once--cover to cover--on a flight between Boston and Los Angeles). Nevil Shute's prose are straightforward and compelling. The plot moves quickly; you will not want to put this book down. Upon finishing "Trustee from the Toolroom," you will not only admire Keith Stewart, you will want to emulate him

I read this one when it was printed before ISBNs came into being. Before I left London & it has always been my favorite Nevil Shute story.

In this age of in-your-face language & novels saturated with every evil event a human's mind can plausibly conjure up, this master storyteller's quiet & lean prose about real, ordinary people & their choices, entices you into one man's little life of miniature models, hardworking wives & honoring one's vows.

From an unpeturbed basement workshop to the paradise of the broad Pacific ocean, a middle-aged man, more comfotable at his workbench than jetting across the world, takes on a mission to retrieve a treasure he himself hid in the ballast of his sister & brother-in-law's wrecked sail boat.

For the sake of his niece, he leaves the safety of his suburban routine to travel far & wide to bring her inheritance back.

A deeply satisfying & redemptive read, of a time long ago, when things were a lot more simple & simple honor was a lot more evident.

Warms your heart, soothes your soul & tells a good story as well!

If you like to have people you admire as central characters in a novel, and if you like to see them overcome their difficulties you will like this account of a modest but very gifted man who has good things happen to help him overcome the hurdles before him. This is a book which will leave you feeling good about the world and the book. I enoyed it greatly, and think it is a winner, tho there is nothing abstruse about it, except the knowledge which Keith Stewart, and various people he meets up with, have and use to have things come out as you will very much want them to.

The title of the "Advertising Manager's Handbook" would seem to imply that the book is aimed solely at the advertising manager. However, the information on planning and layout is perfect for anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of advertising and put it to use.

The "Advertising Manager's Handbook" is a valuable aid to freelancers, as well as ad managers, providing information on everything one needs for an advertising project from start to finish. It is an essential text that should be on the shelf of every ad manager and freelancer.

The book is well organized and laid out, making it easy to locate needed information quickly. The how-to information for all print media television, radio, catalogs, brochures, direct mail, trade shows and other media is very nearly priceless. Easily one of the most comprehensive guides on the subject available.

Although the book's title slants the work towards the advertising manager, the layout and topical coverage is excellent for anyone who needs a good overview of the different types of advertising and how to prepare them.

As a freelancer, this book is invaluable since it provides between two covers everything you need for a project: how to prepare, the time frame, the way to go about writing the piece, and cost factors. It is definately an all-inclusive tome that every ad manager and freelancer should have.

The price may seem steep, but it pays for itself even if used sparingly.

This is an excellent resource for getting information fast. It is very well organized by tasks and includes how-to information for all print media television, radio, catalogs, brochures, direct mail, trade shows and more. The most comprehensive guide I've ever seen! Especially helpful to a smaller agency manager or department head.

IN this book written in late 1940s, Polanyi argues that free-market policies advocated by liberal economists were pushing human society to a breaking points -- he implies that the world wars were the results of these policies. According to Polanyi, these liberal theorists did not understand that the market has always been a human institution, inextricably tied to the social fabric. Their policies are distrastrous for the world because their theories assumed that human beings act solely for financial motives, Polanyi argued. Only the society's reaction to protect itself against the abuses of the market -- the second prong of what Polanyi calls the "Double Movement" -- was the damage of liberalization mitigated.

All this probably sounds obvious today, but I assume that it was quite revolutionary when Polanyi wrote it. So this book is worth reading as intellectual history. I wouldn't recommend it as economic history per se because Polanyi has a habit of glossing over the historical evidences that he uses to make his argument, and his rhetoric sounds over-heated to me at times. Perhaps this reflects his background as a journalist. It made me think that he was overreaching even though I am quite sympathetic to his arguments.

Polanyi's "The Great Transformation" is a broad, sweeping work that encompasses history, sociology, economics and political science. MacIver writes that the book's particular relevance for a political scientist is that "it will help him to restate old issues and to evaluate old doctrines" (xi). However, with the recent renaissance of liberal/classical economic doctrines (what Polanyi would scornfully call the utopia of the "self-adjusting market") it seems that the issues restated and the doctrines evaluated by Polanyi are not so "old" after all. For this reason, the book has even more relevance now than it did for past readers, even just twenty years after its publication, when the heyday of planned economics appeared to be carrying out Polanyi's proposed remedies for the excesses of free marketism, and blunting the force of his critique as applied to post-transformation society. But in the era of WTO and NAFTA, a strong case can be made that his critique has attained newfound relevance beyond even its original application.

This critique can be phrased into a causal historical argument as follows: The Great Depression and two World Wars are Polanyi's dependent variable (the outcome to be explained). For Polanyi, this turmoil of 1917-1945 was a catastrophic indicator that 19th Century civilization had collapsed. And since 19th Century civilization rested upon the "classical" economic liberal doctrine of a self-regulating market, (with accompanying balance-of-power system, gold standard, and laissez-faire liberal state that defended property rights above all else and viewed human labor as no more than a commodity) it is this doctrine that is Polanyi's independent, explanatory variable. For him, the "utopian" and unattainable ideal of the self-regulating market was in reality a destructive force that robbed humanity of its freedom, by causing one hundred years of relative peace (the veritable calm before the storm) and then unleashing heretofore unheard of levels of economic dislocation and political repression. The "Great Transformation" itself is merely the mechanism by which this causal relationship unfolded. It is the process by which the ideal of the self-regulating market utopia brought about the destruction of the old world and the dawning of a new, more dangerous world.

Polanyi's evidence for this process is both deductive and inductive. Most of the book masquerades as a straightforward historical account of the Great Transformation and its exact social processes, but at times Polanyi reads less like an empiricist and more like a deductive rationalist. For instance, he proposes a general covering law of historical causality whereby countries that are apparently "opposed to the status quo would be quick to discover the weakness of the existing institutional order and to anticipate the creation of institutions better adapted to their interests" (28). He then gives Germany in the 1930s as an example of such a process, Germany for him being one of the "catalyst" states that sped up the Great Transformation by abandoning market liberalism in favor of fascism. While the example is fascinating and has obvious historical merit, it's not clear how Polanyi arrived at the general law of which Germany is an example, not to mention whether he truly believes that such a law applies consistently throughout history, or whether he merely means to inductively show the importance of Germany's opposition to the status quo for the particular historical causal mechanism of the Great Transformation.

Polanyi's work obviously runs counter to a great deal of conventional wisdom on the topic of economic and political doctrines and their relationship to social change in the 19th Century. For instance, the 19th century is often called the "age of nationalism," but Polanyi's Great Transformation, like the work of Marx, minimizes the role of the nation-state in shaping the lives of its own citizens, by arguing that state governments were merely pawns for the ideal of the self-regulating market and its stooges in power, both financial and political. Indeed, as a remedy to the negative effects of the Great Transformation, Polanyi seems to advocate a rise in the power of the nation-state, through the active securing of freedom and rights by its citizens in opposition to the stateless self-regulating market. One could brand Polanyi a collectivist for this reason, although he would resist such a charge precisely because of his defense of individual freedom against the market and his warnings about the dangers of erring on the other side: the potential loss of human freedom that would come from free individuals attempting to subjugate and regulate markets through government. "Regulation both extends and restricts freedom; only the balance of the freedoms lost and won is significant" (254). In other words, Polanyi is certainly not a Marxist, because of his lack of both economic determinism and any clear theory of class conflict and revolution, but neither can he be an apologist for capitalism since he seeks to shatter the myth of the self-regulating market as being a "natural" ideal independent of social moorings and above general social welfare. Therefore, instead of these two extremes, he strikes a middle ground that is as paradoxically complex as it is eloquently defended.

Polanyi's masterpiece, 'The Great Transformation' dealt with the same question as his forerunners like Marx, Weber, Durkheim: 'how our world come into being?' or as its subtitle, 'the political and economic origins of our time'. But he didn't suggest any name except banal title of 'The Great Transformation' which is barely used in his book and does barely play the explanatory role in the analysis contrary to his forerunners systemic edifice, for example, Marx's 'capital' or Weber's 'rationalization'. All his writings are the venture to overhaul existing concept, above all, the market. His world is different from forerunners' world 1 or 2 generation ago. The age of masters is over. Now it's time for exegesis. The weight of thought is realized through not only speculating but also historical event. His world was literally the aftermath of liberalism, he argued. His world located between 2 Great Wars one of which he participated in as army officer of the Habsburg Empire and another is the time when he wrote his influential work, 'The Great Transformation' (1944). We need to peep into what he had seen and felt then.
The chasm between generation before World War 1 and after, is reflected in the lack of optimism about path of western civilization in 'The Great Transformation'. Polanyi disdained that kind of optimism as '(liberal) cree'. That kind of attitude is different from his forerunners. Marx had unquestionable faith in 'progress'. And judging from his studies of religion, even pessimistic Weber seems to have shared that kind of view. His forerunners were optimistic about the attaining of rationality and liberty. But the confidence scattered away in the mid of 2 World Wars. Overarching intellectual climate of social scientists in Europe between wars, can be symbolized by the word, obsession. Polanyi's masterpiece was written in this atmosphere. For as Jews of Frankfurt school froze in front of Auschwitz, Polanyi was thus overwhelmed with the magnitude of catastrophe.
German citizen's confidence in Nazi lay not in the psychological disposition as Frankfurt school claimed or nihilist determinism as Krockow asserted but in disillusion caused by inability of Weimar republic to cope with Great Depression and political disorder. Their choice was not irrational but rational at that point. There were 2 choices before them: liberalism, communism. Liberalism seemed too inept to solve the problems they faced. Bolshevism seemed the serious threat to many classes who were troubled with riots since 1918. Nazism was the second best.
This was the bankruptcy of liberalism i.e., 19th century of civilization. It was not limited to Germany but worldwide phenomenon; the signal was sent by England's going off gold standard (1931). Collapse of gold standard means there is no standard for exchange between currencies. So next step in chain reaction was giving up free trade. The economic protectionism caught up world economy, which led in so called the bloc economy; Pound bloc, Franc bloc, Mark bloc, Dollar bloc, Yen bloc. Polanyi argued the failure of liberalism is traced back to fin de siecle and beyond.

Follow the principles outlined in this book and you won't go far wrong with your projects. It's a bit lacking in some places with theory butif it's practice you're after, it's great.

The author provides a Ten Step process that certainly sounds workable. I have no doubt that it DOES work. It would have been nice to see more rationale and discussion of why this particular method is "necessary and sufficient" to run a project. He never really talks about why this method is sufficient. Proof by repeated claim doesn't count. It was still pretty good despite that flaw.

This is a great book from a great man. If you manage projects you *have to* read this and keep it on your desk for frequent reference. It is a very enjoyable and thought provoking read.

An outstanding textbook on economics, which stimulates beginners to enter this field in a manner that makes you like an explorer in a new and wonderful continent! This was the book that made Microeconomics my most exciting discipline in college!

This is the book you should purchase to learn classical intermediate economics if you plan to go to graduate school in economics. You will need calculus, but if you want to learn 'real' microeconomics, calculus is indispensable. Competing texts are too mathematically infantile to be of much use. This text is very worthwhile for self-study because solutions are given to half of the end-of-the-chapter problems.

A relatively mathematically sophisticated student should be able to go through the book on their own. After you've done this, you will be well on your way to possessing the 'intuition' as well as the 'basic' mathematical underpinnings needed at the graduate level.

As others have mentioned, the book is relatively light on game theory. Other texts will be necessary (Binmore, etc.) for learning this topic at the advanced undergraduate level.

This is a very good book for someone that wants a thorough understanding of intermediate level micro. It presents economics at a level in between Hal Varian's Intermediate Micro, and the far more advanced book by Mas-Colell. It gives a clear introduction to economics using calculus and, unlike other books, Nicholson covers second derivate conditions. This provides additional inights that help understand the more technical Mas-Colell.
Also, the type set and fonts are eye-friendly, and Nicholson is a master at explaning economics in a way that helps you learn it. I recommend this book for the serious student who wants to get ready for graduate level microeconomics courses. By serious, I do not mean only students that are majoring in economics, but also any other student who really wants to learn microeconomics.

Having worked in airports for the past 10 years, and now moving to the airline side, I wanted a broad overview of airline economics. The book did a first rate job.

The only criticism would be that if you have a few years of experience and know your way around the basics of financial analysis, some of the examples and explanations will be a bit of a waste of time.

The book is well structured and about as interesting as a book on this subject can be (be realistic, the subject has it's limits...). A great novice book, a good one for those already airside.

If you need a quick insight into airline business - BUY THIS BOOK. Rigas did a great job in explaining the difficult world of airline business to a dummy like me. Now, having a quite deeper knowledge, I am missing some in-depth information about the commercial side and route planning. Overall: a best buy.

I am an airline analyst and this book give me some background info on different aspcet. It gives you basic understanding on how the industry works and I personally learn a lot from this.

The problem is that it is a bit out of date and so I need to spend a lot of time verifing the data. Other than that, this is a very good one for beginners.

This book is really good but it's time for a new edition ! Compared to another excellent book (Jerry March) it is also too expensive. I would give 5 stars to a new and cheaper edition.

The book is very good for reference, yet it is too expensive for graduate students. I would also suggest taking $$$off, relative to March's and C&S's good text, this one is really forbidding.

I took an undergraduate course on advanced organic laboratory method and Vogel was meant to be an incredible reference and life-saver. The overwhelming size of the book might seem somewhat frightening yet the useful information is worth the size and money.

Pavia's "Introduction to Organic Laboratory Techniques" might seem to be a water-down version of Vogel. Vogel is extremely well-written and detailed in laboratory tecniques such as chromatography, distillation, HPLC, crystallization, extraction, etc. A chapter is also devoted to discussion of solvents and reagents, which helps tremendously for separation experiments.

Vogel also discusses aliphatic, heterocyclic, and aromatic compounds and introduces spectroscopic methods. Vogel is recommended for advanced lab course that requires frequent modification of lab procedures and reference for chemists.

The theme of this book is to fit every individual to a specific framework that the author claims proven. The result is robotic communicators. I personally believe that good communicators are those who brings out the best in themselves, creative and charismatic. This book advocates the other way around.

I also feel skeptical doubt the author's communication skills. The book is incredibly dry, too organized, too structured. Don't buy this buy unless it is required to pass your MBA exam.

This is a great book for people working in industry, or teaching business communication. Short. No b.s. Full of good hints, do's and don'ts, and references. News you can use. Buy it.

Munter's work clearly and concisely leads you through making your message effective. She gets to the heart of communicating: what form should it take, how to structure it, and how to execute it so that it has the best chance of achieving your purpose. In particular, I was helped immensely from her discussion about how to analyze your audience and choose the best strategy for relaying your message. She not only covers writing, but also presentations and speaking. To top it off, she includes advice about whitespace, word choice, effective sentence structures, outlining, and more. An all-around great book that every purposeful writer should own.

The author is very good in leading the reader through how money and its avaliability play an important role in determining the economy of any country.
The banking industry and its role are covered as well - starting from a historical perspective to the present day. Our class was doing a chapter on the various reforms in the banking industry when the Enron-Anderson scandal happened. We had some very though-provoking discussions in the class based on the material in the text.
While I am not a complete stranger to economics, I took home a lot of valuable information by the time I was done with this course and this text book. I only wish the publishers had included a CD ROM of real-world exercises / problems that stimulate thought on issues to consider when determining monetary policy.

Highly recommended for both dummies and people familiar with economics. The author presents an unbiased, unpartisan, clear introduction to numerous aspects of monetary policy, financial institutions, and financial markets. Along with factual material the author presents important and profound generalizations and principles.

For once, there is an economist with a passion to teach and communicate well. Although it is supposed to be an introductory text in monetary economics, I return to it again and again to check my basic understanding of this subject.

Professor Van Horne Books are certainly fundamental to approach right the theory of finance. I think we have all to thank him for his studies.

A compact book focusing on fixed-income market, derivatives, and risk management. Highly Recommended for advanced undergraduates

In this text, Van Horne combines elements of both finance and economics; this results in an outstanding compendium of financial theory as it relates to financial markets. However, the breadth of the material and the detail to which the reader is exposed necessitates succinct dissemination in such a compact text (300 pages). I've found more information in this paperback than most hardcover texts (800 pages or more) that I've read, and at half the price.

My fellow students and I plowed our way through it in one 400-level course in the finance program at EWU. This is advanced material and not for the faint of heart. As I remember it, there was a sizable number of students with weak hearts about half-way through the quarter.