Smart and Funny
If you want to understand economics better without actually taking any economics courses, read Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics. P.J. O'Rourke does the heavy studying for you. Or actually he gets someone else to. He does read some dense economics texts and pushes them aside deciding there are better ways to gain understanding.
So off he goes in search of answers. The results are chapters like "Good Capitalism: Wall St.," "Bad Capitalism: Albania," "Good Socialism: Sweden," "Bad Socialism: Cuba," "How to Make Nothing from Everything: Tanzania," and "How to Make Everything from Nothing: Hong Kong." In each country O'Rourke seeks to find the reason behind its success or poverty. He talks with experts, examines the markets, chats with the man in the street and makes sense of statistics. After reading, I feel smarter and it was a painless experience, quite unexpected when I think about economics.
