6th week -Commerce-

Title: Commerce

Author: Paul A Davies

Publisher (level): Oxford Bookworms Factfiles (3.2)

Summary:

Every time we watch television, travel on a bus, or buy something in a shop, we are taking part in the world of commerce. Hundreds of years ago, families worked for themselves. But as people started to live together in towns and cities, they began to do different jobs. People work, earn money and spend money.

The value of world trade is about 4,000 billion dollars a year, and it is growing fast. The European Union began in 1952 when six European countries formed the ECSC. In 1957, the same six countries formed the EEC to made trade much cheaper and easier between these countries. Other parts of the world started to make similar agreements. But there are unfair trade between richer country and poorer country. Richer country controls the businesses of poorer country.

In the 1990s, the stock markets decided that Internet companies were the future of business. New Internet companies were formed everyday and people bought stocks in these companies. But Internet business is the same as other kinds of business: only the best companies are successful and most of the companies go out of business.

The world of business will continue to change quickly. The most successful companies will be the ones who can change with it.

Evaluation: 4 stars

This book is suitable for Japanese students to learn reading, and politics and economics in secondary education. But it isn’t for this reading class because it is already summarized: it has no words to erase. So I picked up what I want to write as the previous review.

I got a lot of knowledge of economics from this book: the history of money, economical problems of poorer countries, importance of fair trade, and so on.