What are you favorite economics books?
this territory is moderated
depends what you mean. I find economics as a strictly academic subject to be quite simple and boring. you frankly don't need much beyond Principles of Economics by Menger. if you are interested in money specifically you should probably add The Theory of Money and Credit by Mises.
there are lots of books that are tangential to economic theory that I think are great. I routinely tout The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto, for example. I have veered more and more into economic history in the past few years too but rattling off that list probably isn't too helpful (unless you insist).
back to the question, there is a snarky end note in Bitcoin Is Venice that says the following, which I think is the best answer:
"to be frank, economics as an intellectual pursuit is nothing more than logic applied to risky and creative human affairs. Which is to say, if the reader has had any experience with people, any experience taking imaginative risks, and if they know how to think, economics will not be difficult, and in fact will all be rather obvious. Most mainstream economists fail on all counts, and the corpus they devote most of their professional time to memorizing adds nothing and likely subtracts whatever little they started with. Should the reader take it upon themselves to indulge in a smorgasbord of anthropology, social and economic history, and literature (for the people part), either become professionally involved in the creative arts or sports (or amateurly but at a high and serious level) or start a business (for the calculated risks and imagination part), and learn some elementary logic and statistics (for the thinking part), they will likely imbibe "economics” by accident and will never need to waste any time, energy, or money on materials exclusively devoted to the subject. Also, they should learn to code. It doesn’t have anything directly to do with this, it’s just a good idea."
reply