Don’t know much about off-shoring, outsourcing or simply have the yearning desire to know what the hell globalization truly implies? These three reads will both enlighten and entertain as they walk you through the arduous path of economic theory and why it matters in the real world. This theme appears to be especially fitting due to the housing market crash, predicated recession and that recently developed facial twitch associated with the looming dread of student loans.

The World is Flat

A Brief History of the 21st Century

Thomas L. Friedman

$16, paperback, 660 pages

Pulitzer Prize winning economist Thomas Friedman, known for his acclaimed novel The Lexus and the Olive Tree, continues the narrative on globalization into future predications for a shrinking world. Friedman’s staunch belief in the zeitgeist of laissez-faire economics now turns to depict a cautionary tale for American supremacy on the global market. The author confronts the “flattening of the world” in the ever-expanding implementation of technology, outsourcing and intellectual competition driving the developing countries forward.

Through fly-on-the wall vignettes and Freidman’s own experiences in boardrooms, the reader experiences the author’s revelations about the changing dynamics of commerce and workforces around the world. From Indian radiologists reading American X-Rays to Chinese firms drafting plans for Japanese homes, the information highway has enabled international trade in unprecedented ways, which speak to grand shifts in the process of globalization. The book is simply brimming with personal accounts of his world-flattening phenomenon and through plenty of antidotal explanations he illustrates the changing state of the world economy.

The novel is written in a narrative style with a light dash of humor and a good deal of experiential advice. However, even with Friedman’s credibility as an economist, he often oversimplifies the issues and occasionally downplays the finer details of economic transactions in order to further his own points. The rise of ingenious Indian software companies or realities of thousands strong Chinese production lines shouldn’t be taken without any account to the current hegemonic dominance of American government and markets. Even with Friedman’s alarmist tone, this book offers a comprehensive understanding of modern globalization in progress.

Freakanomics

A Rogue Economist Explores and Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt and

Stephen J. Dubner

$27, 320 pages

New Yorker columnist Stephen Dubner and scholar, Steven Levitt, break the mold with an unconventional exploration of socio-economic dilemmas. They focus on the curious undersides and anomalies of economic situations seen in real world accounts, asking questions like, “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms” or “How is the Klu Klux Klan like a group of real estate agents?” They approach these issues by often dismissing the statistics and commonly accepted theories in order to decipher problems with fresh eyes and few suppositions.

In the chapter titled “Where have all the Criminals Gone?,” the authors do not account for the decline in crime to greater policing, but to less potential criminals on the streets after the legalization of abortion. As odd as some of their ideas may appear, their “reality not morality” approach is widely refreshing. They authors lack any specific ideology or agenda, but attempt only to get the common person to think more critically about media explanations or so-called expert opinions on economic practices.

Occasionally, ‘the butterfly’s wings leading to a tsunami’ analogous explanations appear a bit too unrealistic, yet this is not a book to be taken as an authoritative economic text. Freakanomics provides an extremely humorous approach to economics, a read for those unlikely to browse the Financial Times, but who could still appreciate the similar cheating quandaries for both Sumo wrestlers and fifth-grade teachers. In all, what it lacks in continuity is entirely overshadowed by the profound entertainment value.

Supercapitalism

The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life

Robert E. Reich

$25, 272 pages

Supercapitalism offers a historical analysis of the tenuous relationship between American capitalism and democracy. The book provides a very comprehensive explanation of the discrepancy between the rise of American economic supremacy and the fall of democratic practices, in a type of corrective aimed at the neoliberalism. However, this author isn’t simply making yet another leftist criticism of big business, but goes into the finer details of how Supercapitalism came into existence and how it affects a myriad of societal woes.

The author traces the incidents and policy shifts that have enabled business to overwhelm governmental restrictions and far outstretch its authority in the last century. Reich demands that we stop holding companies criminally responsible, abolish corporate income tax and provides other solutions which are seemingly counterintuitive to his aim. However, the author justifies his claims in arguing that to change the system we must stop treating companies like people, providing an incentive for corporate responsibility.

The author’s attention to detail, fair explanation and pragmatic solutions give credibility to his points and make a seemingly radical agenda quite convincing. This book is largely a historical analysis — great for a comprehensive review of the capitalist system — but demands the reader’s attention in order to make it through the sometimes dry details. It is an extremely useful read for anyone interested in having a debate about capitalism, without sounding like a naïve college student or a member of the socialist party.