Recently a friend asked for recommendations of books suitable
for instructing high school students in Austrian economics. He
was already familiar with Henry Hazlitt’s classic Economics in
One Lesson and David Gordon’s scintillating primer An
Introduction to Economic Reasoning. I recommended two additional
books for his consideration. 1. Jim Cox, The Concise Guide to
Economics. This book is very short, about 120 pages. But it
comprises 37 chapters and covers all the basic principles of
economics as well as numerous applications. It is plainly
written and assumes no prior knowledge of economics. It has a
definite Austrian orientation. One advantage of the book is that
it fleshes out each short chapter with extensive references to
other sources that the teacher may wish to assign or the lay
reader may wish to follow up with. It could be used as the
organizing text for the course with additional readings
assigned. Or its chapters dealing with real-world applications
could be assigned as supplementary readings. 2.