Larry Gonick

In graphic novel form, this book attempts nothing less than an accessible explanation of capitalism. It also shows how present-day worship of markets harms a person's well-being and the planet's health.

The five commandments of hypercapitalism are: Thou Shalt Consume, Thou Shalt Operate Globally, Thou Shalt Not Regulate, Thou Shalt Spend Less on Labor and Thou Shalt Privatize. How can the average person afford all this consumption when wages have generally stagnated over the past couple of show more decades? The answer is: credit cards, the overall debt of which is about $700 billion. That does not include student loan debt, which is another trillion dollars. Are obsessed consumers really happier than the average person, or do they get a momentary "high" from their purchase?

Is there anything the average person can do about it? Before buying, here are some questions to ask yourself. Can I afford it? Do I need it, or do I want it? Will it improve my life? What company makes it? There are tool banks and seed banks and time banks, where such items can be shared. If your town or neighborhood does not have one, consider starting it. Get to know your local library. It is possible for a business, like an employee-owned business or a non-profit, to be more socially responsible than average. For some people, more direct methods are the way to go. These include boycott/buycott, advocating for a better deal for workers and publicly funded political campaigns or taking to the streets and protesting.

This book deserves six stars. It is very easy to read, and does a wonderful job at explaining capitalism, even for those who "hate" capitalism. It also gives a number of alternatives that anyone can adopt. This is extremely highly recommended. show less

This book was responsible for rekindling my love of history and for me eventually returning to university and getting a degree. it is one of the funniest, most erudite and most charming books in my whole collection, and sits proudly beside more 'respectable' histories.

The cartoon style is just the right side of wacky without trivialising its subjects and humour runs off every page. More surprising are the things you can learn (The institutionalised weirdness of the Spartans! Minoan flush show more toilets! Persians disrupted enemy cavalry with camels!) that Gonick happily shares.

Enjoy - it's a marvellous historical primer and a solid base for further reading. Five Stars show less

I've read this book before, a long, long time ago, but my brother-in-law, Josh, didn't know that when he bought it for me for my birthday. What he did know is that I own (and love) The Cartoon History of the Universe I (especially for its cartoon depiction of the process of evolution), so this was a good bet, and even though I'd read it before, I devoured it fairly quickly after receiving it.

The subtitle of this book is From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome, and it is primarily show more about these two civilizations. Certainly, I am much more interested in learning about China these days now that Jefferson is learning the language. This was a fabulous primer on early Chinese history, though there were a few places where the plots were involved enough with so many names that I got a little lost. This may be a function of my primarily reading this book while "supervising" the kids playing outside.

The history of Rome was easier, as it is more familiar, and strengthening the connections in my brain between late Roman history and early Christian history is always satisfying. Just because it's something I feel I ought to know, I suppose.

One of my favorite things about these volumes is the frequent use of asides for the author to confess his biases, his degree of confidence in his sources, etc. Add in his obvious love of his subject, and the entertainment value of the comics format, and it's obvious why I'm a Gonick fan. show less

This was my introduction to Gonick's "comic" textbooks. As a stats text, it can claim something others can't: it's entertaining. This trait doesn't interfere with the book's ability to teach complicated topics; in fact, the humor allows it to do so with ease. The gags, illustrations, and characters help to break up the hard ideas so they're easier to understand. Many texts jump into the equations without doing enough to explain the basics plainly, but this book invites everyone to show more understand.

The best parts of this book are the chapters on distributions, sampling, and confidence intervals. The visualization of the binomial distribution being squished by DeMoivre into the normal distribution not only provides intuition on the normal approximation, but it leaves a vivid image of the relationship of the distributions. The part on sampling will imprint the 1/sqrt(n) factor in your mind and verse you in sampling issues and strategies. Finally, the analogy of firing an arrow into a target will make you see confidence intervals in an intuitive light.

My only criticisms are that I wish this book had a sequel that dives into the additional topics presented in the conclusion. Resampling, multivariate analysis, and principle components would be good candidates to bring down to Earth. Also, a chapter on Chi square statistics would have been great to round out the development of proportion tests. Anyone interested in learning how statistics is used should read this book. It won't make you an expert or provide you with problem sets, but the concepts will shine through. show less