NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — You can go hungry while running the world economy. So say the corporate managers, investors and bankers who inhabit Daniel Altman’s “Connected: 24 Hours in the Global Economy”, a ground-level look at how the actions of individual workers, companies and governments around the world dovetail in our age of globalisation. Altman, who writes an economics column for the International Herald Tribune, attempts to inject pace into the perennially dismal science by showing what it’s like to be one of “six billion interlocking cogs and wheels” that drive the economy. The unsurprising answer: Such people are so busy that they rarely eat on time. “Even though lunch started at 12:00, I’m still doing e- mails,” says a manager in Shanghai. An economist in New York, for his part, explains how he was “finally set to order lunch to eat at my desk” — at 3 p.m. Poor chap.Such tedious “insights” aside, “Connected” offers a brisk primer for readers who want to know why events in Beijing or Brussels affect their lives in Brasilia or Boston. As such, it sits well on the bookshelf with the recent wave of publications aimed at making economics more accessible. Less polemical than Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” and drier than “The Undercover Economist” by Tim Hartford, “Connected” still manages to translate into easy English such complex topics du jour as the rise of China, the cost of corruption, the risks posed by derivative markets and the importance of patent laws. The book achieves its aim of educating thanks to Altman’s well-executed gimmick of taking 14 news headlines from one day — June 15, 2005 — and turning them into broader lessons. Intel Corp.’s agreement that day to digitalise Vietnam becomes fodder for a chapter on the pros and cons of multinationals. Syria’s decision to open a stock market triggers a debate about the role of financial markets. Alberta’s need for skilled workers paves the way for a chat about immigration. Each headline “illustrates something bigger, a trend or truth that’s affecting the entirety of the global economy,” writes Altman. “Like the earth’s own atmosphere, the economy is a closed system — everything’s connected and every action by an individual instantly affects everyone else.” The result of this 24-hour trip around the world is an introductory course in globalization sure to inform the layman looking for simple explanations of baffling trends. While more experienced readers may balk at the “interludes” <\m> asides that explain the roles played by such things as currencies and oil prices <\m> Altman still serves up enough fresh facts to maintain interest.