Economics: Study Guide to Accompany McConnell Book

This textbook provides an introduction to many of the core concepts of Economics. I was previously already well-acquainted with much of the content of this book, so feel somewhat better able to 'judge' it in some ways. It does its job decently of introducing the reader to these themes, so I wouldn't recommend anyone avoid it if they wish to/must read it, but I would also warn that it doesn't accomplish its job in any particularly special way.

I cannot compare it to other textbooks of a similar level holding similar content, as I haven't been exposed to any, but I feel there must be some out there that do a slightly better job than this one. It is just in general somewhat drier than it could've been in areas.

I found myself making a note of a couple of extracts here and there which were either difficult to understand without further explanation, or which seemed to contradict what else was being taught. This could easily just be an issue others with better understanding may not encounter, but considering it has been written as an introductory text I found one or two of these instances bewildering. These cases were very infrequent, however, and most of the book doesn't suffer from this. It did seem in areas like it was struggling to focus on its point in certain chapters in which the chapter structure could do with revision (examples springing to mind include the chapter on the monetarist view of the macroeconomy and that on game theory). These took longer to decipher exactly what the book was trying to convey.

I cannot say whether this is an issue with every version of the book, but in mine, no answers to chapter questions were available. This might just be for my PDF copy, though, and for any physical copies this might not be a problem.

I realise this review so far probably reads somewhat similar to the way I've criticised the textbook for being, so to bring it to a conclusion, the textbook does what it says it will do (introduce its reader to the disciplines of Macro- and Microeconomics), just in an overall less engaging manner than I feel it could have and I can say with confidence other textbooks I've read have (ones not covering this specific subject, though).