{"id":587,"date":"2016-10-27T13:58:56","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T13:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/?p=587"},"modified":"2016-10-27T14:03:10","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T14:03:10","slug":"book-review-atlas-economic-complexity-mapping-paths-prosperity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/book-reviews\/2016\/10\/book-review-atlas-economic-complexity-mapping-paths-prosperity\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review – Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mark<\/a>
Mark Russell, 1st Year Southampton Student, gives his verdict on the Atlas of Economic Complexity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I would like to preface this review by admitting that I do love a good statistic, and that, although I do get slightly too excited at the prospect of learning an almost certainly useless piece of information, I have not allowed this to cloud my judgement when writing this review.<\/p>\n

The title of this book is one which would certainly cause some people to put it straight back down should they pick it up unsuspectingly in a library or, perhaps, from the coffee table of a particularly keen economics student. But once you get past the tongue twister; Atlas of Economic Complexity:\u00a0<\/em>Mapping Paths to Prosperity<\/em>, there is a wonderful array of statistics and information which are well researched and genuinely interesting. To be perfectly frank, the best part about this piece of literature is not the wording in the first 100 or so pages, but the subsequent colourful graphs featuring the answers to questions you didn\u2019t even know you had. For instance, if I asked you what Honduras\u2019 top export was, you probably don\u2019t know but instantaneously you want to know \u2013 which is exactly where this book comes in. According to the authors in the preface the Atlas \u201cattempts to measure the amount of productive knowledge that each country holds\u201d which it certainly does. It offers an insight into the knowledge and skills a country possesses which otherwise are extremely difficult to measure.<\/p>\n

Even though the wording is only around a quarter of the book I would personally say it is a slog to read through, trying to grapple with the complex economic language along with understanding the extremely busy graphs takes a lot of concentration. Having said this, the authors split it up nicely into 7 sections which are certainly easier to digest. Personally, I would say this is more of a slow burner in terms of reading and not something worth racing through as if it were the final Harry Potter on release day. Even though it may take time to get through the pages of the Atlas though, this does not devalue the information being portrayed within in, I may even go as far as saying that is part of the appeal of the book. It can be put down and picked up at any time and used as a reference guide as much as a book which is read cover to cover.<\/p>\n

In terms of the presentation of information in the \u201cCountry Pages\u201d, which display the same information as the website (http:\/\/atlas.cid.harvard.edu<\/a>), the layout is extremely simple. On the left-hand side of the double page spread for each country there is a product space which shows which areas of goods they produce; this gives a good idea of how well developed and diverse a country is. It also shows how well connected all the different areas of business and production are. There is a selection of squares on the right-hand page representing in one instance what they export, another on where they export it to and a final one on where they import most their goods from.<\/p>\n

One of the key parts of reviewing a book (or so I\u2019m told) is the action of recommending or not recommending it based on the reading of it. When reading it I felt a bit of nostalgia in the learning of all these vitally important facts which although interesting are not exactly problems which crop up every day. As I finished it hit me, this is like a Guinness World Records on Economic steroids, and to be honest I loved it, almost as much as I loved unwrapping that Annual every Christmas for about 10 years. Now, although I would not hesitate to install this Atlas on my bookshelf, I would say for the average person who just wants to find out some interesting statistics about faraway lands the website would suffice. The explanations of Economic Complexity, although interesting, are not the key component and as such the website serves it all up in a nicer interface than good old paper. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Honduras\u2019 top export is knitwear!<\/p>\n

By: Mark Russell\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I would like to preface this review by admitting that I do love a good statistic, and that, although I do get slightly too excited at the prospect of learning an almost certainly useless piece of information, I have not allowed this to cloud my judgement when writing this review. The title of this book is one which would …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84196,1030549],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-general-interest","column","threecol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/bscbusinessmanagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}