Rating: 
Summary: If you don't have this, get it!
Review: This book is a wonderful illustration of the simple (so simple they go unnoticed) principles of a market economy and the many fallacies of adding socialism to the mix.I could have easily given this 4.5 stars, but I didn't have the option. The only thing that kept me from giving it 5 was that Hazlitt partially caves in about halfway through the book on the topic of unions. Unions are tantamount to coersion and have no place in a market economy.
Rating: 
Summary: Wanted to cast my 5-Star vote
Review: Excellent book. I have nothing new to say that the previous reviewers have not said - just wanted to cast my vote for a 5-Star piece! I have read numerous books on economics and political philosophy - this is among the best. A high school student could read it and learn. Worth the money, worth the time it takes to read (very easy reading.) Keep it in your bathroom instead of Reader's Digest and read a chapter every day.
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Summary: Hazlitt shines light on the dismal science of economics
Review: This is perhaps the best book to introduce the layman to the field of economics... This book was a Godsend for me... I stumbled on it in my early college days when I was taking two semesters of Economics and neck-deep in a Keynesian textbook of Fabian socialist fallacies and liberal lies. Hazlitt's book opened my eyes to an insightful intellectual library that supports free-markets and individual liberty. Economics in One Lesson enlightened me, while it helped develop my economic reasoning. It helped me confirm what common sense told me all along - that a laissez-faire free market is the way to go! While I already had a libertarian bent, this book basically introduced me to the Austrian School of Thought on Economics. The "Austrians" vindicate the market economy's spontaneous order as the surest way to have optimal prosperity, opportunity, and individual liberty for the masses. The verbal logic and reasoning of the Austrian school is generally easy to understand and makes sense to the reader. Needless, to say my interest in the laissez-faire perspective grew - and I read and amassed a library of hundreds of interrelated books on various disciplines from economics to history to political theory. I also recommend any books by other "Austrian" luminaries such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray Rothbard. Hidden Order by David Friedman and Capitalism by Ayn Rand are also worth mentioning.
Rating:
Summary: Fine Summary
Review: This is a great primer that should be read in all schools. Hazlitt does not deal in economic details here. Intead, Economics in One Lesson covers more useful ground for the average person: it cumulatively teaches us how to think logically about economic issues. And, of course, how you think is the basis for what you think. Even the casual reader will take away an ability to spot economic silliness, many of which spring from the same bad premises, the same elementary blindness to cause-and-effect. Economics in One Lesson provides the type of knowledge that stays with you for a lifetime.
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Summary: Put This Book In Your Children's Hands
Review: And make them read it. Less a primer in economics than a concise debunking of crank positions on economic issues, this book can clear the air (and the mind) quickly after some interested sophist plumps for a discredited idea. Hazlitt's parable of the broken window, meant to show how what dosen't happen as a result of human action is at least as important as what does, is the best introduction to economic theory for the average reader since Adam Smith. The visible results that people see as a result of government intervention in the market must be weighed against what did not come to pass because of the reallocation of resources (i.e., your hard-earned money) that such action necesitates. This book is timeless, in that it is not tied to concrete examples drawn from the headlines of 1946, and is also remarkably free of venom , passion, or spite, which too often mar polemical works on economics - and serve to camouflage bad reasoning. This book can be a basic education in itself, or the beginning of deeper study, in the works of Von Mises, Von Hayek, Schumpeter, or of Hazlett himself. Unlike his opposition (Keynes, et al), Hazlitt is actually readable. -Lloyd A. Conway
Rating: 
Summary: Right-libertarian views presented as fact
Review: The problem I have with Hazlitt's economics primer is that much of the information he presents as fact is nothing but right-libertarian ideology. Hazlitt attempts to "explode liberal myths" by taking out of context the social advances America has made in the last 70 years. The author believes that unchecked corporate power will liberate the economy and, therefore, humanity. Hazlitt is obviously a corporate apologists who refuses to scrutinize the "successes" of liberalized trade policies throughout the world. A look at any number of third world countries will reveal the true outcome of relinquishing government and social controls of the economy.
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Summary: The best lesson in Economics
Review: A great and accessible book on economics. If you know nothing about the topic, read it, because it will save you from the pitfalls that have brough on most of modern economic errors. If you know much about economics, read it, because it will correct many tipically wrong notions of economics in your head. It is not meant to be a tratise, nor to solve all problems. Like all great books, it is a simple, concise, yet essential single lesson in economics. From a broken window glass it takes you through all main aspects of modern economics and teaches you an essential lesson: think about the unseen effects of economic policies and actions. Get that lesson wrong and you will find yourself in the midst of a third world economics mentality.
Rating: 
Summary: Too simplistic
Review: Although though we're (presumably) members of the same political choir, the author treats economics much too simplistically. Calling this book a polemic on Keynesian economics would be accurate, calling it an economics treatise would be just plain wrong. Time would be better spent reading Bastiat.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good If One Can Get Past The Sarcasm
Review: Henry Hazlitt happens to be right. Perhaps with so few works of this kind -- that is, economic works which are logical and correct -- I should have given it 5 Stars. But I expect a lot. Once again: Henry Hazlitt is right: Too often so-called "economists" take only the short term, one-sided, special interst group viewpoint and come up with half-baked economic plans and plots that enough people accept allowing such ideas to become everyday government practice. Practices, that frankly, screw us all in the long term. From the idiocy of Keynes to the ideas behind the communistic theivery of FDR's "New Deal", Hazlitt cuts through and clarifies many, many false economic practices. Hazlitt explains and demonstrates again and again how real economics is the science of the effects of any financial practice on everything and everyone. He also points out conceptually how similarly a country's government's ecomomic decisions and preferences mimic that of one's own pocket book, values and choices. Unfortunately, Hazlitt suffers from one of the same problems Rand did (since this book was first published during Rand's writing of Atlas Shrugged, I suspect it may have had a large effect on both the style and content of Atlas). Both authors have had to fight so long and so hard for their ideas, with so little appreciation that they often resort to sarcasm just to make a little mental space for themselves. This puts a strain on the reader, as one attempts to understand, integrate and connect up the longer chain of events and results of various economic practices undertaken by governments and the people they represent. Also, though his points are excellent, he occasionally leaves certain links in the chain a bit vague, expecting the reader to "just get it", when crossing those bridges on ones own requires some serious backtracking and analyisis. His ideas are so important, and once one gets to them, so well made, I wish Hazlitt could have written a simpler, more direct, less sarcastic, less complaining, less wordy, better linked version of this very good work. Nevertheless, if I was able to speak with Henry, I would say: "Thank you."
Rating:
Summary: No adjective suffices.
Review: What a great book! I recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn reality based economics. The book's arguments for free-markets are simple, powerful and irrefutable. You do not need a PhD in economics to understand this book and armed with it you could straighten many a PhD out. This book is equally valuable for a teenager just starting in economics or someone well read in the subject. Hell, I might buy it again.
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