How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say - and What It Really Means

This book begins with a long-winded discourse on the use of language to bamboozle, obfuscate, and exert power, followed by a witty, educational and occasionally biased glossary of economic, financial and banking terms, followed by a long-winded, politically biased afterword. This book would earn a 5th star from me if the discourses before and after the glossary were halved, and if the pages freed up in so doing were used to lengthen the glossary, which is missing words that it really should have. The audio CD version of the book was wonderfully read by a guy whose refined voice and occasionally snarky tone put me off initially; but eventually I realized he was perfect for this book. Five stars for his narration.

A good book that is accessible, witty and very informative. A good intro that explains A lot of basic concepts well.

This is very interesting and informative. I thought I knew all the terms defined in this book, but Lanchester has a very different view of the matter, and I learned a lot about economics. He's very good at giving a concrete explanation of what seems abstract.FWIW, I also like Lanchester's talk 'Marx at 193' in the London Review of Books, which is what led me to this book in the beginning. Lanchester is not a Marxist, but he is very sympathetic to the central questions of Marx's writing. While he may not agree with Marx's answers, the questions still bear thinking about.

I bought this book for my college-age son who plans to major in business or economics at UC Berkeley. I had heard John Lanchester interviewed by Michael Lewis ("Moneyball") and a strong point that Mr. Lanchester made in that interview was that he wrote this book for the many people who don't understand money terms and sometimes pretend like they do. When I gave it to my son he thanked me profusely and started reading it right away. He thinks it's very useful for him right now and will continue to help him in his future career.

I can't say enough about how informative this book is.John Lanchester has an uncanny nack for articulating verbal mysteries that you didn't even realize you had been wondering about.Example: It had never occurred to me that the word "fiscal" and the word "monetary" had different meanings.But they do.And now I know what they mean.If you read this book, you will too.John Lanchester, sir, you are a boss.Thanks for writing this book.

While I knew most of the content already, I learned from the new words. I especially enjoyed the Epilog discussion focusing on the state of the world's economy and future expectations. In all, an easy to digest compendium.

This one is so full of information, it's hard to get through. Keep at it, though. It's worth it, There are so few things that give you any semblance of fiscal education that it's well worth the time it takes to read this.

Incredible health, wealth, and social growth has been chronicled by the author in the last 30 years. The critical question is how we bring many more into contributing to maintaining, expanding, and accelerating the progress and not just consuming the advances being made.

This is a good introduction to the world of econimics. Well written, researched and presented.It is a thought provoking and enlightening read.

Am still reading it., so far enjoying .....my computer crashed last week and I am still trying to recover my sites.

Flimsy, superficial and lacking any real depth of explanation or anaylsis. Wouldn't recommend it

Easy to read, concise and interesting.

John Lanchester's book 'Whoops!' was undoubtedly the finest book on the credit crunch. Informative, angry and eminently readable. How to Speak Money is a good primer for finding out more about the world of finance in general. The alphabetic glossary style structure of this book was not initially attractive to me as a way to learn about a subject, but Lanchester's writing is engaging enough to pull it off. Another great popular economics book in an increasingly crowded field.