Henry Hazlitt has written in this book a clear and concise overview of basic economics and the consequences of bad economic policy. Inserting his own analogies as well as those from the towering Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and his French predecessor Frederic Bastiat, Hazlitt is able to skillfully tear down fallacies in economic policy proposed by those who fail to see the unintended consequences of government intervention in the free market. Although the first edition was published in 1946, at times the book feels like it was written in direct response to recent economic policy which proves its relevance stands the test of time. A revision of the text was done in 1978 which, among other things, added a final chapter titled "The Lesson After Thirty Years." The chapter is mostly doom and gloom because basically none of the lessons from the book had been learned and in fact all the problems that existed originally had all been amplified. Alas, thirty years after the revision, we're back to the same gloom. His ray of hope at the end was that more and more people were becoming aware of these lessons and shortly thereafter, a fan of his book, Ronald Reagan was elected President. Would that all men were to read and understand the lessons from this excellent book and once again put a serious adult in the White House.