"No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other."

Pilar Diez del Corral writes,

I’m a doctor in Art History and I usually read your blog with great interest. Do you think “The Human Action” is too difficult for a reader like me? I mean, is it a very technical book only for economits? I’m actually interested in understanding the mechanics of the economy because my country (Spain) is under the worst goverment in its last seventy years. We’re suffering an extraordinary economic crisis and our “premier” keeps on denying it!

When I first tried reading Human Action, I got very bogged down in the beginning and then gave up for a while. I had come to Austrian economics through Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson (or rather, through the audiobook version, read by Jeff Riggenbach), and I think that’s a great place to start. I also recommend The Concise Guide to Economics (which has the advantage of being brief, clear, and online!) and Economics for Real People, by Gene Callahan. All of these books are included in Mises.org’s list of books for beginners, as is the MP3CD of Rothbard’s Economics 101, which I proudly produced.

But so far I’m mostly just repeating my old post "where to begin."

Pilar Diez del Corral is asking something more specific.

Before I return to the specific question, however, let me say that I’ve also read a few popular introductions to mainstream economics; audited an online intro course, which used McConnell & Brue, one of the most popular college intro texts; and listened to the Teaching Company’s introduction to economics, as well. I decided that the standard Austrian accusations against mainstream economics were true. There may be exceptions out there, but for the layman trying to achieve economic literacy, I recommend the books you can get at Mises.org — and while I can easily be accused of bias, I assure you that I came to Mises.org through Austrianism and not the other way around. All the books I’ve listed so far, I originally purchased through Amazon.com. I didn’t even know about Mises.org until I was reading Callahan’s book, which The Mises Institute published.

So back to Human Action. I’ve been preparing a chapter a month for over a year now, running them as weekend editions, usually the first weekend of every month.

As part of this preparation, I’ve also been preparing HTML versions of Bob Murphy’s study guide chapters, which are extremely helpful. You can find these HTML versions listed among Murphy’s daily articles at Mises.org or you can grab the first 32 chapters here in PDF.

If you start by reading a chapter of Murphy, then a chapter of Mises, alternating your way through Human Action, I think you’ll find it much more accessible, and I have to say that reading Mises quickly becomes a blast. If your experience is at all like mine, you’ll find that you acclimate to his prose style, which might seem stiff at first, and you’ll develop a profound appreciation for his logic and his thoroughness.

In every chapter I prepare, there are passages I find very funny and passages I find very revealing — lots of AH HA! moments — and sometimes they’re the same passages. As I said, the very beginning might take some getting used to, and I’ve only made it through half the book at this point, but I very much look forward to reading the rest. I will end up having taken 2 or 3 years to read the whole thing, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s a book to digest, not a book to swallow whole.

Yes, it is "a very technical book," but no, it is certainly not "only for economists."