Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly ingenious
Review: Landsburg is tremendously clever at coming up with logical explanations for everyday phenomenon. Like most economists, he's more interested in logic than facts, but he probably knows more about real human beings - as opposed to Economic Man - than the average economist (granted, the competition isn't strong). Lots of fun.
Rating: 
Summary: sometimes misses the point of opposing arguments
Review: Landsburg's book is entertaining and often witty, and written in a conversational, easy-to-read style. The book is very good at presenting often unintuitive and novel (to the non-economist) ways of looking at things. This is an invaluable book for pointing out common fallacies in arguments about deficits, inflation, unemployment, and other major political issues. At the same time, however, I can't help but think that Landsburg occasional misses significant relevant issues, most glaringly in the final chapter on environmentalism. For example, Landsburg describes a case where Jack wants a woodland at the expense of Jill's parking space and vice versa, and argues that the desires are exactly symmetrical. While environmentalists claim that the wilderness should take precedence "because a decision to pave is 'irrevocable'", Landsburg says "a decision _not_ to pave is _equally_ irrevocable" because "Unless we pave today, my opportunity to park tomorrow is lost as irretrievably as tomorrow itself will be lost" (p. 224). While this is correct, this misses the environmentalist's point that it is much easier to convert woodland to parking lot than to do the reverse. The environmentalist fears taking actions that are irrevocable in the sense that they cannot be undone in the future. Landsburg's perspective throughout the book seems to me to ignore the possibility of actions taken which may have consequences which may adversely effect the very existence of mankind (or economic institutions).
Another example in the same chapter is when he suggests that the best way for environmentalists to support the existence of cattle is to eat beef: "If you want ranchers to keep a lot of cattle, you should eat a lot of beef" (p. 225). This presumes that environmentalists care about the number of cattle in existence, irrespective of their living conditions. Would Landsburg have told abolitionists during the Civil War to buy more cotton as a way of improving the plight of slaves?
Yet a third example in the same chapter is about preservation of the Amazon rain forest, because a new species of monkey was discovered there in October 1992. Landsburg writes that this gives him reason _not_ to preserve the rain forest, since he "lived a long time without knowing about this monkey and never missed it" (p. 226). Would he make the same argument if it was a tribe of people whose existence depended on the rain forest rather than a species of monkey? If not, then he's missing the point of those who argue that animals (or the environment) have inherent value. It is clear from his writing that he disagrees, yet his own position does assign inherent value to the interests of people and so is not neutral. He seems to admit at the end of this chapter--in the letter he wrote to his child's teacher--that his view on environmentalism amounts to a religious view that is not subject to discussion (just as he thinks environmentalism itself amounts to a religion being inappropriately taught to his child).
Despite my complaints, I found the book as a whole to be entertaining and informative, and would recommend it along with David Friedman's _Law's Order_ (I haven't read Friedman's _Hidden Order_) for insight into economic analysis of issues of the day.
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful, but devoid of detail
Review: Landsburg's book should be entertaining for economic neophytes. His style is a bit questionable, in that he can occasionally be found lost in self-argumentative circularism without resolve. I found David D. Friedman's book 'Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life' a more valuable book. As a singular example, his discussion of the price of popcorn in theaters seems, intuitively, better than Landsburg's. What is particulary amusing about economists, in general, is their intractable belief that people make rational decisions. A recent body of thought, behavioral economics, would argue against that as a certainty. Dr. Kent Hickman et al. (Gonzaga University) published an interesting study on this topic in a Harvard edited journal, which examined bidding on the game show 'The price is right'. It's not difficult to read, but may require a search at a university library to find it. Economics can be fun, and conceptually at least, isn't beyond the understanding of the common man.
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Summary: Milton Friedman
Review: Milton Friedman --Nobel Prize-winning economist-- praised this book. Enough said: it's worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: Witty and thought-provoking
Review: Non-technical economic writing usually takes the form of superficial - and often inexpert - commentary on ephemeral issues. Landsburg's work is different, in that his non-technical writing consists in the explication of complex economic concepts in lucid and entertaining prose. It is witty and perceptive writing, and is likely to be of enduring value. There are three absolutely priceless chapters in particular that are devastatingly funny and economically important: a list of economic howlers (such as that of the well-meaning, non-economist academic who believed that government spending involves no cost anywhere else in the economy); a shrewd description of the differences between environmentalism (which, in its non-economic form, is more like a branch of religious fundamentalism) and economic reasoning; and a superb exegesis of equilibrium theories of asset pricing. The last of those chapters covers my own professional field, and I can only say that the sport Landsburg has with those supposedly expert financial advisers who tout dangerous superstitions like 'dollar-cost averaging' ought to be required reading for anyone considering investing in the stock market. My only real criticism of the book concerns the ubiquity of Landsburg's premise, which he deploys over a range of subjects, that economic agents respond to incentives. That, of course, is absolutely right, but it is not the only reason that markets generally allocate scarce resources more efficiently than bureaucrats. A more powerful reason is the problem of information: market pricing is a co-ordinating system as much as it is a system of rewards. Even if men were sufficiently altruistic not to require incentives, they would still need information, of a type that dirigiste economic planning cannot provide. But this is a minor quibble. The book is great stuff.
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Summary: Economics made easy
Review: Steve Landsburg demonstrates to the layman just how easy and fascinating economics can be. Indeed, this was the very first commercial work on economics I ever read, and it inspired me to make econ my major.
Anyone who's ever taken a college course on this subject can testify that professor's cannot explain the simplest concepts (when something costs more, people won't buy as much) without turning it into a coatrack of a graph. Landsburg illustrates economic principles with amusing examples from real life, such as how rising unemployment can be a good thing; it could mean families which normally have two wage earners have so dramatically increased their income, they only require one member to work.
My favorite chapter is where Landsburg skewers the environmentalist movement. If you know Green Party members, you probably shouldn't quote Landsburg to them, as the situation might come to blows soon afterwards. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: Practical Economics
Review: Steven Landsburg makes the world of economics fun and accessable in "The Armchair Economist." Please read this book if you would like to understand an economist's outlook on life. If you like this, you will also like David and Milton Freedman's books with a similar tone.
Rating: 
Summary: Economic logic the way everyone should think
Review: Steven Landsburg takes a number of seemingly absurd statements and shows them to be true. On the surface it seems that everyone hates dirty air and seat belts save lives. But if you follow out all the consequences of an action you see that this is not necessarily true. Should be required reading for all high school seniors. My only complaint is his last chapter on environmentalism. Mr. Landsburg went out on a limb on a subject he seems to know too little about and it shows. 23 5 star chapters and 1 3 star, can't win them all.
Rating:
Summary: An enticing invitation to economic thinking
Review: Steven Landsburg's book shouldn't be thought of as an economics textbook. It presents no graphs and few conclusions. Dr. Landsburg rather presents questions and then a fascinating tour of the mind of a trained economist. He asks his reader first to take the tour and then to use the blueprint and join him in thinking like an economist. I have used The Armchair Economist as a supplement to my Advanced Placement Economics classes for two years. My students relish each opportunity to watch Landsburg's mind in action and to join in on the fun. Many of them have purchased copies of the book for themselves. They particularly enjoy sharing discussions about the questions presented with friends and parents.
Rating:
Summary: Complex economic lessons boiled down for the everyday reader
Review: Steven Landsburg's book, The Armchair Economist, is a simply written but deeply effective primer on the economic way of thinking. I my own self am a free-market radical, and, while I don't agree with everything Mr. Langsburg writes, his views are overwhelmingly on target. Want to know why movie popcorn costs so much? The "obvious" answer is wrong. Are you happy when your senator provides your area with a road project? You really shouldn't be that excited about it. Even the most absurd notions (Unemployment is good! Recycling is bad!) are hard to refute once you get the basics of economics down. Mr. Landsburg writes that economics can be largely defined in one terse sentence: people respond to incentives. If everyone in America knew how much that makes sense, I can guarantee 90% of our nation's (and world's) social ills would be eliminated. I used to tell people that if everyone read the first few chapters of a standard economics textbook, the world would be better off. The same holds true for this book.
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