Blogger/economist/culture epicure Tyler Cowen is hard to please. But he is pleased by Nariman Behravesh's new book, Spin-Free Economics: A No-Nonsense, Nonpartisan Guide to Today's Global Economic Debates. Chief economist at Global Insight, Behravesh is often quoted in the Hancock column & elsewhere.

I was shocked by how much I liked this book. I think of it as a kind of contemporary Capitalism and Freedom, although it comes across as less partisan and the coverage is much more global. I agreed with almost everything the author said and I thought the framing was effective and spot on just about all the time.

Many MR readers already know too much to be the appropriate audience here, but if you wish to give someone an economics book as a gift, or as an introduction to thinking about economic policy, here you go. I'm still astonished at how remarkably good this book is and yes I did read it all the way through. Greg Mankiw wrote a very nice blurb for it.