Book Review: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

I recently read The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson. It'a a book about shipping containers, the big metallic boxes you see everywhere. The book tells the history of the containers and also discusses about how it changed the economical laws of the world.

The topic was really interesting at least to me. I've always been interested about the big economic systems and how those get changed. Shipping containers have seriously changed the world and could be seen as one of the latest industry revolutions before the internet.

The topics in the book vary from unions to ship buildings to urban development to the actual shipping containers. So it covers a lot of topics which belong together via the containers.

Unfortunately the book was bit longish to read, even thought it was interesting. There are quite a few people introduced and it was bit difficult to follow all of those. Also all the different parts covering union wars and strikes were bit boring. I believe the book could have been even 100 pages shorter with good editing.

I still recommend this book to everyone. These kind of books explaining the world and the big economic systems there are, are important. People usually are terrible at understanding these systems and this book explains those in quite an interesting way.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: End This Depression Now! by Paul Krugman

Wow, wow, wow. That was the feeling I got from reading the book. Nobel Prize winner from Economics Paul Krugman, gives in the book his view what should be done to End This Depression Now! His view is quite contradictory to the politics that have been ongoing. He rates himself to be New Keynesian and he brings many views from old Keynesian macroeconomics.

First of all, as the best influencers, he knows his stuff well and has the ability to explain those entertainingly and easily. Book about macroeconomics and recession doesn't sound like the most interesting topic, but I wasn't bored even once with this book. He uses examples well and still backs up his stories with hard cold facts.

I don't even think that I would be capable of arguing against any of the ideas he presents in the book. His main idea is that markets do not work perfectly and increasing government spending would help economy (at least US) out from depression.  He brings lot of historical and scientific proof that solution could be so simple.

Other than recession, book is an excellent source to get more understanding about macroeconomics. He is such a good to explain things, that I at least had couple of aha! moments reading the book. It increased my understanding of macroeconomics.

Book is concentrates to US, but is has few chapters to Europe also. I admit being quite supportive for our common currency Euro, but Krugman was able to explain what has been so risky on it. Also he explains why Euro has been one of the main reasons for the recession in Europe and also in Finland where I live. Still he doesn't recommend of getting rid of Euro, but believes that bit higher inflation and few different moves from European Central Bank should do differently to get us out from recession.

I'm so glad I read this book. Few previous books I've read have been good, but this was an eye-opener. These are the feeling you get with best books. You feel that your thinking has changed after reading it. I highly recommend the book to everyone. It's essential book about essential subject.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen