The authors have made a great effort writing this book, which is divided up in two parts: macro- and microeconomics. It gives insight of how we should understand current economic affairs on both the macronomical and micronomical levels. The book does serve this purpose quite well. I particularly liked the summary at the end of each chapter.
The book does however lack in solid economic theory, which makes this book inconsistent. If you are an economics student I would not recommend it for you to actually study economics (there are better books around for that), but merely as a reference to understand that theory is what you learn at univerity, and understanding the theory in practice comes usually afterwards.
The big lack of this book is that it is only based from an American point of view and thus is not very useful for anyone living outside the US. Even the international economics chapter won't satisfy your desire to really understand what's is actually going on (when you don't live in the US). What this book totally fails to point out is that the US economy is very different to most other economies in the world.
On the whole two stars were awarded for this book, as I think that it is very useful to help your understand the current economic affairs. At the same time it fails in providing solid economic theory, it is based far too much on the US economy, and it is incomplete on other parts. Yet, if you live in the US, are studying economics and want to understand what it all means in practice, this book will help you! If not, don't bother.

Don't buy the audio version from audible.com .

Their programming skills are terrible. I could not download some of the books I bought, could not burn into cd the ones I could download, and forget about making it work with an mp3 player, unless you're lucky.

I know about 5 people who bought stuff from there and only one had the luck of downloading a working file and burning it successfully to a cd.

The quality of the narrations is awful, at least in the books I managed to hear (only on windows media player, nothing else worked). If you're used to books on cd or tape, you're up for a big disappointment buying from audible.

On top of all that, they have the worst customer service I have ever witnessed. The site was not working right when I tried to purchase there for the first time. I sent them a message with no answer.

In a second attempt, I bought the stuff and some files never downloaded (which means they just stole my money and I don't know what I can do since I don't live in USA). I sent another message with no answer again.

Then their weird program, which turns Windows Media Player automatically on instead of working alone, showed no compatibility to Itunes and no possibility of burning cds or dreaming about hearing books on Ipod. I sent them a third message and nothing. A fourth and guess what? Nothing again.

So I am at least trying to warn other people here to avoid being caught by such scheme. I hope Amazon gets rid of audible as soon as possible. I always got great service from Amazon and the affiliated bookstores, or even other stores selling electronics, health products and others, but audible is just the worst company I ever wasted my money with. Too bad we cannot give notes to them like with the affiliated booksellers.

Sorry by the poor text, I am just mad with them.

Certainly, one of the better books in the Portable MBA series. Each chapter offer useful insights applicable to understanding the competitive environment and the factors that influence that environment. The book was easy to comprehend for the non-economist.