The Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life [Hardcover]

One problem is that he tends to simplify everything way too much. It's hard to relate what he says to the real world when many of the details are gone. For example, when explaining national debt, he talks about the lending rate, and the rate of return to being exactly the same. He doesn't explain what would happen if they were different.

Another problem I had is the lack of continuity. He seems to switch from one topic to another without any direction. Sometimes, the types of arguments were repeated from one hundred pages ago, while the previous page had nothing to do with the current page. With about 30 or so seemingly random arguments and situations present, it's hard to place it all into any lesson or theme.

Finally, and most importantly, Landsburg seems to take out his aggressions and displays some mean spirited rants in the latter part of the book. I felt that it incredibly hurt his credibility. When someone starts debasing someone else's opinion vehemently and atrociously, it gives the impressions of fanaticism rather than cool-headed thinking. He seems to enjoy criticizing every line of particular papers and making the writer feel like an idiot. He even goes so far as to reprinting a letter he wrote to his daughter's kindergarten teacher espousing the horrors of environmentalism and how the teacher is indoctrinating his daughter into it.

I would recommend this book as good, fun, quick read. As an educational piece, it needs to be more organized and more levelheaded.

I found it an entertaining read, with some though-provoking ideas often wittily written up. It is such a shame, though (and I read a review here from someone else with similar views) that the text is threaded so liberally with the author's private conceits. What a very smug and self-satisfied man.

Again agreeing with a previous review here, in the end the sheer arrogance becomes offensive and begins to overshadow the arguments being put forward.

I'm glad I read the book. I'm also glad, however, that I shall likely never meet Steven E Landsburg.