Month: April 2013

Editors: Susan A. David, Iona Barnwell and Amanda Conley Ayers Publisher: Oxford University Press (Oxford Library of Psychology) – 1097 pages Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram There are many pathways to happiness, depending on which happy person you ask and what makes you happy. What is your own value system, what components of happiness do you need in it, and how would you rank each component in importance in terms of how much happiness it brings to you? In this lengthy but highly practicable book of more than a thousand pages with 79 chapters organized into 10 sections –...

Authors: Barbara W. Murck and Brian J. Skinner Publisher: Wiley Publishing – 558 pages Book Review by: Deekay Daulat A large book with a generous number and variety of full-color, three-dimensional images spread along other material including text over more than 550 pages of this book really makes learning geology easy, and the time spent studying, highly productive. This book is definitely a keepsake as a valuable reference source. The book contains 16 chapters, four useful appendices – one ach on units and their conversions, a periodic table of elements, tables of the properties of selected common minerals, and...

Editors: Martin Peitz and Joel Waldfogel Publisher: Oxford University Press – 602 pages Book Review by: Deekay Daulat What does the term ‘digital economy’ mean? Rather than explain to you the meaning of this relatively new phrase, let me give you examples of what it includes. It refers to the non-physical or electronic commerce platform (primarily the Internet) where goods and services are bought and sold. Online retail and wholesale; online news, information and entertainment media; and other physical and digital products (such as movies and music as examples) sold via the Internet are all part of our digital...

Authors: Martin Lee Abbott and Jennifer McKinney Publisher: Wiley – 425 pages Book Review by: Krishnan Ramamurthy The main thesis of this book is that good research design and solid analytical skills are both essential to getting answers to important questions in social science. The authors – Martin Lee Abbott, PhD and Jennifer McKinney, PhD, professor and associate professor respectively, of sociology at Seattle Pacific University – have been involved in research design and statistical analysis for some time. Dr. Abbott is the author of two books: The Program Evaluation Prism: Using Statistical Methods to Discover Patterns and Understanding...

Authors: David Miles, Andrew Scott and Francis Breedon Publisher: John Wiley & Sons – 601 Book Review by: Sonu Chandiram I find macroeconomics, the study of countries’ economic data and accounts, extremely fascinating. Microeconomics on the other hand relates to numbers about individuals, companies, organizations and other small entities, which is also interesting but not as much, to me. This highly informative book makes the study of macroeconomics interesting because it relates various theories to facts and data, or better still, makes theories come alive by giving examples. Concepts such as consumption and investment, current and trade account surpluses,...