By Peter
Pugh and Chris Garratt
Great idea, terrible execution. When I first saw a
rack of these books – small paperbacks that use a black-and-white
comics format to explain complicated modern ideas – I was so overwhelmed
by the excellent topics covered that I could hardly decide which to buy.
Kant, Sartre, Cosmology, Buddha, Feminism, and Chaos Theory were just
some of the wide range of subjects. I chose this one because economics
is one of my weakest points. If only this book had helped!
Keynesian Economics is only presented in the larger scope of economics in general. The book was clearly intended for an audience of economics students. I picked up some of Keynes’s specific thoughts but no good sense of how everything fit together and how his ideas related to others’. Worse, the illustrations were terrible. Most of them are portraits of the significant characters in 20th century economics, but why does looking at these guys help with understanding? Charts and graphs would have been more effective. Many of the concepts are incredibly abstract, so a diagram or illustrative metaphor would have been excellent. Instead, we get a weak sketch of Keynes dictating the concept.
All in all, this book made me appreciate Keynes about as much as Margaret Thatcher does – which is a shame, since his theories seem like they should appeal to my liberalness. The Quantum Physics book in this series fared a little better.