Economic Facts and Fallacies

Thomas Sowell takes several instances of false ideas about how the economy works and shows how they are not supported by real life evidence.  He also shows how political policies based on these ideas often backfire and aggravate the problem they were supposed to solve.  In many ways, this book is like a more modern version of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson written in the mid-1940's.  Not that Hazlitt's book is outdated, as many of the economic misconceptions being examined are stubborn ones that keep recurring no matter how many times they are debunked.  Many of these misconceptions are ones that politicians love to use in their election platforms to manipulate the populace into voting for them, so this book is invaluable for people who wish to exercise their citizen duties responsibly.