Eldaerenth reviewed Everlasting Light Bulbs by John Kay
Review of 'Everlasting Light Bulbs' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is the first economics (or "pop econ") book I've ever read, and I found it very interesting. It was recommended to me by a couple of friends, one of whom has recently retrained (as most friends my age seem to be doing lately) as an economist. He was right when he said, of the list of 8 books he recommended, that this would be a good one to start with.
It's essentially a collection of essays and columns written over a 7 year period. Aside from a couple of standalone essays, the book is organised into 6 broad categories or topics that provide good coverage of aspects of economics that I was unaware affected aspects of society, our history and my everyday life.
It lends weight to [a:Ben Goldacre|1387272|Ben Goldacre|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1285983498p2/1387272.jpg]'s assertion that any throwaway explanation for something is "probably a bit more complicated than that", which dovetails nicely into …
This is the first economics (or "pop econ") book I've ever read, and I found it very interesting. It was recommended to me by a couple of friends, one of whom has recently retrained (as most friends my age seem to be doing lately) as an economist. He was right when he said, of the list of 8 books he recommended, that this would be a good one to start with.
It's essentially a collection of essays and columns written over a 7 year period. Aside from a couple of standalone essays, the book is organised into 6 broad categories or topics that provide good coverage of aspects of economics that I was unaware affected aspects of society, our history and my everyday life.
It lends weight to [a:Ben Goldacre|1387272|Ben Goldacre|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1285983498p2/1387272.jpg]'s assertion that any throwaway explanation for something is "probably a bit more complicated than that", which dovetails nicely into [a:Tim Harford|14442|Tim Harford|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1271375056p2/14442.jpg]'s TED talk in July 2011. I don't mean the difficulty of understanding economics (though that exists), but rather that the cause of any given problem cannot be explained away with a simple "well it's because of X". Nothing's that simple. And this book illustrates that very well.