The National Debt

School Library Journal

Gr 10-12 Davis' strung-out, jargon-filled account of the growing national debt will bore most students. Like a good professor, Davis tries to give enough background in basic economics for her readers to grasp the main ideas in their complexity. Unfortunately her style is too abstract for teenage readers, especially in the examples, and she uses too much jargon. Some terms that have only an indirect relationship to the debt are well-defined (e.g., prime rate) while others that have a strong impact (such as monetary policy) are mentioned without explicit definitions. When a critical concept like ``crowding out'' is discussed at length, the definition still remains unclear. Most students, after reading this analysis, will say ``So what?'' But, if readers push through the first half of the book, they'll find in the second half a good account of how Congress and the President have tried to deal with deficit problems. Here Davis engages readers' interest by presenting real people in actual situations and a clear outline of what Gramm-Rudman-Hollings cuts really mean. This part would be useful for college economics majors, but high-school students will be better served by news magazine analysis. Jonathan Betz-Zall, Sno-Isle Regional Library, Lynnwood, Wash.