East Asia and the World Economy Book

It would be easy to insist that Professor Clavin has written a poor book. That is demonstrably false: she has written a very detailed synthetic survey of the Great Depression's impact on Europe. The shortcomings of Professor Clavin's volume come not from its content - which is superb - nor from its research, which is masterful. I learned a great deal from this book even as I found myself skipping back and forth to follow parenthetical glosses, Googling terms I was unfamiliar with which were undefined, and being both overwhelmed and confused by a tidal wave of numbers (one burning question I hold is why she chose, throughout the book, to write $1,100,000,000 - 1 Billion, 100 Million, as $1100 Million. But no answer is ever given.)

I am not an economist, nor am I an economic historian. I have great respect for those, like Professor Clavin, who are. But I was woefully out of my depth with this volume. This is not the fault of the book itself - as it is an eye-opening examination of the European economies of the 1930's - but rather of some of the manner in which it is presented: too embedded in the economics niche for those without a firm grasp of economics to begin with.