Description:

This might be the bestselling economics book of all time. And it has become so on sheer force of its logical and rhetorical power. It is nothing short of a masterpiece. Henry Hazlitt wrote this book following his stint at the New York Times as an editorialist. His hope was to reduce the whole teaching of economics to a few principles and explain them in ways that people would never forget. It worked. He relied on some stories by French classical liberal Frederic Bastiat and his own impeccable capacity for logical thinking and crystal-clear prose. He was writing under the influence of Ludwig von Mises himself, of course, but he brought his own special gifts to the project. As just one example, this is the book that made the idea of the “broken-window fallacy” so famous.

This new Laissez Fair Books edition was created especially for members of the Laissez Faire Club. It has an editorial preface by Jeffrey A. Tucker, LFB’s executive editor, and a new foreword by economist Robert P. Murphy, author of two volumes in the bestselling Politically Incorrect Guide series. It also includes Steve Forbes’s foreword from the 50th Anniversary Edition (1996). This is the book to send to reporters, politicians, pastors, political activists, teachers, or anyone else who needs to know. Written for the nonacademic, it has served as the major antidote to fallacies in the popular press, and has appeared in dozens of languages and printings. It’s still the quickest way to learn how to think like an economist. And this is why it has been used in the best classrooms more than 60 years.

“It is a brilliant performance. It says precisely the things which need most saying and says them with rare courage and integrity. I know of no other modern book from which the intelligent layman can learn so much about the basic truths of economics in so short a time.” – F.A. Hayek