Editegrity
  • Home
  • FAQ
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Resources
  • Contact
  • Blog

The Editor Who Reads Too Much
~a writing, editing, publishing & book blog~

Talking to My Daughter About the Economy or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

5/5/2020

 
Picture
Talking to My Daughter About the Economy or, How Capitalism Works–and How It Fails.

Title: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails

Author: Yanis Varoufakis

Genre: Nonfiction

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Own it: Yes


When I think about teaching my teenage-self economics, I’m sure even Hercules/Heracles would have given up. Luckily, another Greek has stepped up to the challenge, and Varoufakis wrote the book to teach his own daughter about how the economy was created and functions.
 
Authors, read this book if you need help with writing a nonfiction book that is conversational in style and breaks down complex concepts into bite-sized, digestible chunks. This book is a great example of how to write about difficult topics for an audience that wants to learn but not feel condescended to. 
 
Readers, read this book if you want to better understand economics in general, but I find it very relevant to the current conversation surrounding the issues of easing lockdown measures during the covid-19 pandemic. We all understand people’s livelihoods are at stake, but Varoufakis’s structure demonstrates why it will be so difficult to rebuild. The information is presented in a way that unravels complex, intertwined systems (banks, money, markets, people) into individual threads. Those threads are then rewoven into the recognisable systems we know today. Some of my bafflement at how these systems could have ever come into being was eased, which made me feel much more part of conversation than I previously had.
 
What I want to tell people about this book is I remember the first day of my high school economics class. My teacher, Mr. Charleston, also my driver’s ed instructor—who, of course, rode a recumbent bike to school, taught us how to make a million dollars by the time we retired. When I was unpacking my boxes in London in 2019, I actually found those notes. I hadn’t realized I’ve been dragging them around the world for decades. I flipped through them but didn’t find anything useful to advance my understanding of what’s happening in the economy today, so I often ask my husband about ‘how things work.’ He gave me this book for Christmas and said he wouldn’t answer any more questions until I read it. 

Dutifully, I read it in April 2019 and wished I’d had this book in high school. At the same time, I think high school is too late to teach these concepts, similar to how it’s too late to start teaching languages at that age. I wouldn’t have been interested or had the attention span for this book when I was fifteen. 
Only now as an educated adult do I find myself finding my way into these important concepts. Varoufakis’s main message is not to leave the economy to the experts, and he means: don’t let your lack of understanding be part of the problem. If we don’t know the rules, we can’t play the game. And the game is really understanding how the people at the top are manipulating the money supply and how it will affect our daily life. 

So if you’re like me and wish you understood it all better, this is the book to pick up. An easy quick (and not depressing!) read! 


    Author

    I read a lot and I hope to help authors with the craft of writing. I share good examples of difficult aspects of writing: point of view, narration, world building and more.

    Occasionally I give editing tips and share insights from the world of publishing. 

    The author of the blog stands infront of the purple Knight Bus from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    Send me an email!

    Recent Posts

    Endgame
    England's Queens: The Biography
    Keeping Up With the Editors
    ​Happy Birthday, Poe!
    Appreciate a Dragon Day
    I Was Wrong – Or What I Learned from a Year on the SYP London Committee
    Shortlist of the Best Books I Read in 2020
    V for Vendetta
    Rebecca
    The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
    Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen
    Wishful Drinking
    The Giver
    The Mandibles: A Family 2029–2047
    The Diary of a Bookseller
    The Dutch House
    The Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort
    Becoming a Writer
    Homegoing
    Things Fall Apart
    ​Blog FAQ
    Welcome to My Bookshelves!

    Archives

    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019


    Categories

    All
    2020
    Africa
    Anarchy
    Anchor Books
    Anglo Saxons
    Banking
    Biography
    Birthdays
    Bloomsbury
    Book Blogs
    Book Club
    BookMachine
    BookMarchine
    Books
    Bookseller
    Bookshelves
    Bookshops
    Box Hill
    Capitalism
    Carrie Fisher
    Chaos
    Christmas Books
    Classics
    Collapse
    Comics
    Communication
    Copyeditor's Handbook
    Copyeditor's Workbook
    Corona Virus
    Counting Books
    Debbie Reynolds
    Diary
    Diary Of A Bookseller
    Dictionary
    Doubleday
    Dragons
    Dr. Burney
    Drinking
    Dr. Samuel Johnson
    Dystopia
    Economics
    Economy
    Edgar Allan Poe
    Editing
    Editor
    Elizabeth Norton
    Emma Of Normandy
    Family
    Family History
    Fanny Burney
    Fantasy
    Farrar
    Fiction
    Finance
    Freelance
    Genre
    Graphic Novels
    Guildhall
    Harper
    Hiking
    History
    Hollywood
    Houses Of Parliament
    Jane Austen
    Japan
    Jonathan Cape
    J.P. Tarcher
    Knopf
    Knowledge
    Learning
    Letters
    Library
    Literary Fiction
    Lives Of Women
    Lockdown
    Lockdown Christmas
    Londinium
    London
    London Bookshop Crawl
    London History
    London Open House
    Medieval History
    Memoir
    Michael O'Mara
    Motivation
    Murder Mystery
    Networking
    Nonfiction
    Palace Of Westminster
    Penguin Random House
    Plays
    Pocket Books
    Political Science
    Progress Report
    Proofreading
    Publishing
    Queen Of England
    Queens
    Roman Ruins
    Roots
    Royal Courts Of Justice
    Royal Family
    Royal History
    Short Stories
    Simon & Schuster
    Skills
    Sourcebooks Landmark
    Starting A Business
    Star Wars
    St. Dunstan In The East
    St. Paul's Cathedral
    Straus And Giroux
    Study
    Theater
    The Shard
    The Strand
    The Walkie-Talkie
    Thriller
    Tips
    True Love
    Tudor
    UK Travel
    V For Vendetta
    Vikings
    Volunteer
    War Of The Roses
    Westminster Abbey
    Wigtown
    Writer Tips
    Writing
    Writing Advice
    YA
    Zoom


    RSS Feed



​​Contact​
FAQ
​About

© Kelly Urgan 2016–2021

  • Home
  • FAQ
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Resources
  • Contact
  • Blog