This was my first real book on economics. Starting with this masterpiece was a little intimidating, since I hadn't even read Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson yet.



I soon found out that Rothbard was clear, easy to understand and convincing. There is no complex economic jargon, so this book is for anyone with even a modest economic vocabulary.



The book is broken up into three parts:

-PART I: BUSINESS CYCLE THEORY

-PART II: THE INFLATIONARY BOOM: 1921-1929

-PART III: THE GREAT DEPRESSION: 1929-1933



In the first part Rothbard explains the Austrian business cycle theory and addresses many of the alternative theories and criticisms. Rothbard does an impressive job and doesn't leave much room for doubt. There is clarity in his arguments and at no point do you feel confused or lost. It seems to make sense.



Part two leaves the realm of theory behind and transforms the book into a thriller-like tragedy. We all know what happens in the end, but it is still quite intriguing to follow a story of foolish policies created by foolish policy makers. The "villains" and "good guys" are introduced here(note: Rothbard does not present it like this, but I simply have some extra imagination).



Rothbard goes through the boom with great detail, which also means that the most boring part of the book is here. It's good to know that the research has been done, but statistics and numbers aren't the most fascinating things to look at. Not that there's a lot of them, but still(yeah, I kind of forced myself to remember something even slightly bad about this book).



Part three starts by completely destroying the idea of Hoover being laissez-faire. I already knew that Hoover wasn't laissez-faire, but Rothbard shows that not only was Hoover not laissez-faire during the Depression, but he had been pushing interventionist policies since at least 1920. After this Rothbard goes through all of the harmful government policies from 1929 to 1933. From Smoot-Hawley to public works, the logical fallacies behind the policies enacted are clear to anyone, yet law after another gets passed. The last part of the book should be read at least once every few years, just as a reminder of how to not do things.



The book does not go much beyond 1933, which was my biggest complaint about the book when I read it. To remedy this, Robert Murphy's The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal (The Politically Incorrect Guides) should do the trick.



It would be impossible for me to give anything but five stars to this book. The flaws are minor, but the positive impact Murray had on me through this book was immense. I did not expect there to be much theory, so the first part completely blew me away.



Economics hasn't been a hobby for me for some time now. I now consider it my calling. Hopefully I'll be able to call it my career soon. On the long list of people who made me take this path, there will always be the one who made me -at the time a complete novice in economics- understand; the one who made difficult things simple:

Murray N. Rothbard