 | Price Comparisons: Rental | | Sorry, the textbook you were looking for is not available as Rental, at any of the stores we searched. | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | Steve Slavin's lively and comprehensive Macroeconomics student-friendly, step-by-step approach, coupled with its low price and built-in Workbook/Study Guide is very attractive to adopters. Instructors and students like the author's humorous anecdotes, direct language, and easy conversational style. The text encourages active rather than passive reading. |
Average Customer Rating:   Grate Product was in excellent condition delivered on time very good seller. If needed I will defiantly purchase from him again Too easy? The text, though "down to earth" is essentially a "dumbed down Econ book" as my professor so affectionately called it. Yes the arithmetic is simplified, and the diction is 4th grade material, but I wouldn't necessarily call that a good thing.
Reading through the text it seems like Slavin babies you the entire way. Oh, we cannot handle a graph with more than two lines on it...that'd be the end of the world. He over simplifies important concepts and I think he's gone a little far in trying to present economics as painlessly as possible. It is a noble attempt, but taken too far.
Beyond that, the text is very new and up-to-date. I can see that his extra-help boxes might sometimes be useful, but overall I am not pleased with the text. more sinned against than sinning Usually I would not bother to write a review of an economics text, but happening upon the other reviews of this book (there are two at the time of this writing), I feel that this book has been unfairly maligned and in need of some defense.
Its advantages:
1. The author writes in a clear, down-to-earth, non-stuffy tone that makes reading the text easy and, well, as painless as you're gonna get. He explains complicated economic graphs, curves, and concepts in plain, easy-to-understand language.
2. Very little math, other than rudimentary arithmetic and division, is required for this book. This can be great if the teacher is unsure about his students' math abilities. I have found that many economics textbooks complicate explanations mathematically without really adding much to anybody's understanding: Slavin does not do this. Even basic algebra is not required to navigate through this book.
3. It's cheap. Amazon's price will change now and again, but the price is easily half that of other comparable economics texts, such as Mankiw's and Blanchard's. This is great if the teacher knows that affordability is a major concern for the students.
As for Slavin's politics, I would agree that his stance on many issues can be inferred from his discussions of them in the book. However, the discussions are always fair and not tendentious.
For example, when discussing what "full employment" consists of, he says something like: "We'll take 5% as representing an economy's full employment. Why? Simply because this is a compromise between the 4% favored by liberals and the 6% favored by conservatives."
So the book is not so much tendentious as forthcoming and even-handed. I feel the other reviews unfairly paint this text as the screed of some unbalanced liberal. Although I do not agree with the author on many issues, this is simply not the impression I got with the book: I was very satisfied with it. Laced with inappropriate political opinion This book does a fair job of presenting basic macroeconomic principles. Unfortunately, it is heavily laced with the political opinions of the author. He has many opinions about what the U.S. government and people ought to be doing, and doesn't miss many opportunities to let the reader know what's being done wrong.
Whenever a comparison between some economic aspect of the US and other countries is to be shown in a chart, they are chosen so that the US is listed at one extreme. For example, on page 155, a box with the title "Should Our Gasoline Taxes Be Raised?" has a list of countries with their taxes. The United States is listed dead last. There many instances where the other countries to be compared are chosen to give the impression that the U.S. policy is extreme.
On page 109, under the title "Why Do We Spend So Much and Save So Little?" is an entire paragraph of editorial comments, including "The 'me generation' has had a fascination for every conceivable type of electronic gadget, has had to buy new wardrobes every six months as the fashions change, and has had to drive the latest-model, fully loaded luxury foreign car. In fact, much of what we buy is made by foreigners."
These are not isolated examples. The book is littered with them from beginning to end.
In summary, I would not recommend this book to anyone. I would not recommend it to instructors or students. If you are signed up for a class that requires this book, you should seriously consider dropping the class. Slavin's Macroeconomics for Democrats The book is interesting but I feel it is somewhat tainted with Democratic Party ideals. This book is required for my college so I was forced to read and learn from it. The economic issues seem to bash the Republican Party and others which do not share the views of the Democratic Party. i would not recommend the book unless it is a reading requirement for college. |  |
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