I'm going to be a nonconformist myself and oppose the near-univeral approval of Sowell in this discussion. His book Basic Economics was the first book on econ that I read, and I was very impressed by it. It reaffirmed the rather right-wing political views that I'd inherited from my parents. However, after taking a few introductory econ classes at university and doing further reading on my own, Sowell starts to appear very ideologically driven.

Sowell is a free-market fundamentalist, in that he opposes most government intervention in markets, and universally trusts laissez-faire capitalism to provide the optimal social & economic good for practically any situation.

The problem with this position is that there's simply a ton of evidence that targeted government intervention provides far better outcomes in many situations.

Another classic example is environmental pollution, a classic case of tragedy of the commons. On the topic of global warming, Sowell doesn't even try to address the issue. He belives climate change is a hoax perpetuated by Democrats.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/01/27/sowell-the-catchwords...

Sowell writes in a conversational style, which is great for accessibility for non-economics. However, he is rightly criticized as failing to cite rigorous studies to back up his opinions.

For a more balanced view of basic economics, I'd highly recommend Principles of Economics by Greg Mankiw.