Todd Sandler, an economics and political science professor, has received the 1998 Quality of Communication Award from the American Agricultural Economics Association.

Sandler won the award because his book, “Global Challenges: An Approach to Environmental, Political, and Economic Problems,” is credited with making abstract ideas and concepts understandable to the average college-educated reader.

Sandler has taught at Iowa State for 12 years, and “Global Challenges” is the 12th book he has written.

“It was a very easy book to write, but it was difficult to take sophisticated concepts and make them understandable,” Sandler said.

Sandler said he felt it was important to write this book because it deals with many of the problems and issues that the world will be facing both today and in the future.

It addresses issues such as global warming, international terrorism, population growth and disease eradication and puts a spin on them by using a game theory framework, he said.

“The game theory allows a look at how individual countries might respond to actions,” Sandler said.

“Global Challenges” is being reprinted after being released only a year ago and is getting positive reviews from other professionals in the political science and economics field.

“Todd Sandler’s ‘Global Challenges’ offers the most accessible treatment to date of the complex ecological, economic and political web of connections that define the new international political order,” said C. Ford Runge of the University of Minnesota in a press release.

Rungs said Sandler’s book will be of great value to other professionals in the field.

“It captures highly sophisticated relationships in cogent and carefully crafted arguments and explanations and will be of wide use to students, teachers and policy professionals,” he said.

Sandler said he already has a second book about political science in the works.