I was just talking about how great Human Action by Lugwig von Mises is with @elvismercury and since today's Mises Institute news letter linked to an old speech about the book I thought it was a perfect time to recommend it to the whole Stacker News community.
In my mind, this is the treatise on economics. Nowhere else will you find the underlying philosophical framework laid out so thoroughly. Some people really don't care about the philosophy (including most economists), but I find it fascinating.
I started reading Human Action in undergrad. That was inspired by the first Ron Paul campaign. I didn't have a copy of the book though, nor an e-reader, so I read it on the Kindle app on my iPhone 3. It's a monster of a book and probably took me about three months to get through.
From the Newsletter
Indeed, if we look at the failure of the welfare state, the persistence of the business cycle, runaway inflation, and out-of-control debt, we'll see that each is addressed and predicted in Human Action.