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Current econ PhD student here. Sowell is great. There's a 3rd edition out now.

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-3rd-Ed-Economy/dp/0465...

I second this recommendation. I learned a lot about economics from this book...and felt my liberal latte-drinking hippy self shifting a good deal towards the right :).

Thirded. I would also recommend Economics for Dummies. Sure, it's a "For Dummies" book but it actually goes into quite a bit of detail and gives good visual / graph based explanations for things that Sowell covers more verbally.

For those who want a taste: www.altfeldinc.com/pdfs/BASICECONOMICS.pdf

Not the complete book though.