A colleague has asked me to recommend a book that will help her – a very intelligent and numerate person – understand the news about Greece and the Eurozone, whether or not there's a recession, what the effect of public spending cuts will be etc etc. Even though the economics reporters on the whole do a great job of describing the debate about such issues, the language and concepts are hard for non-economists to absorb.

Microeconomists (like me) would perhaps say that part of the problem is the fundamental vacuum at the heart of macroeconomics, but nevertheless there must be some useful guides for the general reader. These don't come across my desk all that often, although Phil Thornton has reviewed some recent examples on this blog – What You Need to Know About Economics and 30 Second Economics – and I looked at Making Sense of the Modern Economy.

Serendipitously, though, yesterday Romesh Vaitilingam gave me a copy of the new, sixth edition of his Financial Times guide, Using the Financial Pages. Running to so many editions is pretty good testimony, and the book looks as crystal clear as I would expect from such a terrific communicator – it goes beyond economics to cover financial jargon and concepts too. So my colleague will have a few things to start her off. But other recommendations are welcome.