Book excerpt: Macroeconomics: Understanding the Global Economy, 3rd Edition is to help students – and indeed anyone – understand contemporary and past economic events that shape the world we live in, and at a sophisticated level. But it does so without focusing on mathematical techniques and models for their own sake. Theory is taken seriously – so much so that the authors go to pains to understand the key aspects of theories in a way that will not put people off before they see how theories are useful to analyse issues. The authors believe that theories are essential to better understand the world, thus the book includes a wealth of historic and current episodes and data to both see how theories can help interpret the world and also to judge their validity. Economies today are very inter-connected; what happens in China matters pretty much everywhere; and what happens in one (even small) country in the euro zone has implications for the whole euro area and beyond, consequently Macroeconomics, 3rd Edition adopts a very international focus.