About The Book

Want to know more about the odd creatures that inhabit our economic environment? The Field Guide to the U.S. Economy identifies over 160 important issues, holding a magnifying glass to trends affecting our everyday lives.

Short, easy-to-follow presentations take you off the beaten track, well beyond Washington and Wall Street. Graphs and cartoons liven up the facts. A “Toolkit” helps you interpret and use economic statistics; included here are explanations of price indices, GDP, the poverty line, and other economic concepts. The Glossary provides clear, simple explanations of many technical terms.

From the distribution of wealth to the provision of child care, from job benefits to health-care coverage, from international financial crises to global warming, the Field Guide offers information needed to understand - and to improve - the world we work in.

This website offers sample pages, ordering information, news and analysis of economic trends, and direct access to useful data available on the internet. Don’t be afraid of getting lost, and don’t worry about predators or pests. The Field Guide to the U.S. Economy is designed to send you out on a safe and excellent adventure.

Sample Pages

Here are ten pages from The Ultimate Field Guide to the U.S. Economy, one from each chapter. They’re in Adobe Acrobat format (pdf), so you’ll need to have Acrobat or Acrobat Reader on your computer to look at them.

Download Adobe Acrobat Reader for:

CEO Pay

How much do they make? (133kb)

Rising Retirement Risk

Workers who put in their time have less to look forward to in the future. (164 kb)

Glass Ceilings

Women still face hurdles that men don’t. (79 kb)

Who’s Raising the Kids?

The next generation will be more diverse than the last. (120 kb)

How Big is Government?

Sizing up the government relative to the rest of the economy. (144 kb)

Bare Cupboards

Hunger is still a problem in the US. (62 kb)

Hey, Big Spender

The US outspends the world on healthcare. (174 kb)

Upper-Class Benefit Analysis

The poorer you are, the higher your risk of exposure to pollution. (66 kb)

GDP is Misleading

There are significant drawbacks to the normal measure of economic wellbeing. (69 kb)

Hot Money
Short-term international investments are more common — and more dangerous. (95 kb)

Half the fun of writing the book was finding all the cartoons to include (one for each page) and the samples above don’t reveal the wide range of artists who contributed work. We are extremely proud that the pages of the Field Guide are graced with so much terrific art (more than 40 different artists from four continents), and we have samples of some below. We encourage you to check out the websites of the following contributors:

Corrections

In spite of our best efforts, we are sure that some mistakes have probably slipped through the process and into the book. If you notice something that seems incorrect, please let us know. We will be posting corrections here.