Naked Money: A Revealing Look at What It Is and Why It Matters by Charles Wheelan, W. W. Norton, 2016. Available from Amazon and other sellers, including Barnes & Noble. You can listen to a radio interview with the author here. (There’s a pretty funny section where a caller rants about the Federal Reserve and Wheelan answers him respectfully; I’m sure there were some eye rolls going on behind the mike.) Author’s website is at nakedeconomics.com.
Another one of my finds on the new book shelf at the library. I had originally planned to write a review of all three Naked books, but I found the one on statistics to be pretty dry, and that’s quite an accomplishment for Wheelan. I plan to give a listen to Naked Economics, the first book in the series (I have an audiobook on hold at the library) and see how that one goes. But I can promise that if you read NM you will indeed understand our whole weird set of concepts about the stuff we use every day to get what we need and want.
Wheelan’s great strength as a writer (and I’m sure as a teacher; he’s a professor at Dartmouth) is his use of humor and examples. If I had to pick one section of the book that has stuck with me, it would be his hypothetical about a village that uses rice as its basic commodity and how a simple system of rice certificates would work. Then he moves on to the gold standard, which works exactly the same way. And if you read this book and still think we should go back onto the gold standard, well, you weren’t paying attention!
Rather than trying to summarize and condense the ideas in this book I would simply urge you to read it. You will learn a lot about monetary policy in a very painless way. Wheelan has written two other books in his “naked” series. I’ve tried to get through Naked Statistics but found that even Wheelan can’t make that subject interesting. However, I have great hopes for the first book in the series, Naked Economics, which I plan to listen to via audiobook. We all have to deal with money; might as well understand it, or at least try.
What library do you have the audio of “Naked Economics” on hold from? The Douglas County Library doesn’t have it and I’ve been trying to educate myself on economics.