This book is an excellent, concise introduction to one particular kind of economic thinking: the idea that an economy works best if left to free market forces alone, and that any kind of government intervention is bad and disturbs the economy, rather than improving it.

This is what I like about the book: I have never seen such a clear exposition of this line of thinking. And this is my greatest disappointment: That these ideas are presented as the only possible way to understand economics, the only conclusion that any rational mind would naturally arrive at. Those who don't are, in the words of the author: stupid, apostles of a different faith, enemies.

In other words, this book is not a rational treatise of economics, but a political pamphlet. You realize this a few pages in, and you have to live with it for the rest of the book.

That being said, many of the ideas are thought-provoking, due to the crystal clear simplicity with which they are stated. I constantly wondered: Is this right? Who would claim the opposite? Why? Who has the better arguments?

So in all, it's not a bad book. But you have to start thinking where the author left off.