for the love of economics

An old colleague of mine, John Lott, has a new general interest book on economics and markets. Following in the footsteps of Steven Levitt's best-seller, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (written with Stephen Dubner), Lott has now written Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't. Beyond the merits and applications of the "economic way of thinking", Lott is interested in discussing the relative merits of market processes and government intervention.

Lott has had a wide-ranging career as an academic and a public policy analyst. (Our paths crossed most often, early in my career, when I was doing my research on the Congressional labor market as well as term limits, congressional spending, and campaign finance.) In the public eye, Lott has been most famous for his two books on gun control: The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control Is Wrong and More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws.

I haven't read Lott's book yet, but have a good idea what's in there and can almost recommend it without seeing it. Likewise, I can give the same sort of tentative recommendation for David Friedman's Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life. (I've read one other book by Milton's son and it was excellent.)

Of other books in the same genre, I can fully recommend two excellent books by Steven Landsburg: The Armchair Economist (which I use in my Intermediate Micro course) and Fair Play (excerpts of which I use in my Labor Economics course).

If you have an interest in public policy, you should pick up one of these books and add it to the top of your reading pile.