It is a macroeconomics text and has very little on microeconomics—a large and arguably the more useful part of economics.
This is not an introductory text. For someone starting on economics Mankiw has another very readable text “Principles of Economics” which I recently read and recommend. This will get you up to speed on the main concepts and then you can happily proceed to more advanced texts with plenty of math. As an introductory text I would prefer this to Samuelson “Economics” which I found covered similar material but too slowly.
A lot of what people think of as “Economics” is another related discipline called “Finance”—which is about investing, and speculating, more or less. No recommendations there as all the books I have read on the subject are pretty bad.
Edit: reading the above post you seem to be actually recommending a book on macro and one on micro also, though this is not entirely clear (eg the top level poster managed to misunderstand it). That may be OK provided the reader is prepared for a very steep learning curve. I would suggest that time spend reading an introductory text first would be well spent.
BTW I have a copy of Mankiw’s introduction if any LWer in Australia would like to read it.
Two issues with this recommendation
It is a macroeconomics text and has very little on microeconomics—a large and arguably the more useful part of economics.
This is not an introductory text. For someone starting on economics Mankiw has another very readable text “Principles of Economics” which I recently read and recommend. This will get you up to speed on the main concepts and then you can happily proceed to more advanced texts with plenty of math. As an introductory text I would prefer this to Samuelson “Economics” which I found covered similar material but too slowly.
A lot of what people think of as “Economics” is another related discipline called “Finance”—which is about investing, and speculating, more or less. No recommendations there as all the books I have read on the subject are pretty bad.
Edit: reading the above post you seem to be actually recommending a book on macro and one on micro also, though this is not entirely clear (eg the top level poster managed to misunderstand it). That may be OK provided the reader is prepared for a very steep learning curve. I would suggest that time spend reading an introductory text first would be well spent.
BTW I have a copy of Mankiw’s introduction if any LWer in Australia would like to read it.