You have two seconds to tell me your reaction to each of the following works

Good but repetitive
Interesting for historical reasons
Not remarkable

1. derivative of Hume
2. didn't read
3. overrated, Thucydides did it better and more correctly

I don't think it can be a compliment. It is some pretty intense stuff if you aren't sitting around drawing circles in the dirt all day.

Exactly, if you ever decide to read anything out of Book X, it. Is. Unbelievably. Difficult. It is the least important book and no one uses the concepts developed here except Euclid himself when they return for the QEFs in book XIII.

Some of its ridiculously easy compared to other geometrical/arithmetic works. After all, many people forget entire books in Elements are solely devoted to the properties of numbers, but are helped with the explanation through the use of lines. The lines are just numbers though.

How is Thucydides? I'm thinking of buying his History of Pelopenesian War, because I've referenced Herodotus' Histories in historical debates before and he has literally been wrong about many things. I did like The Histories for the development of the historical method, however.

1. Pretty boring and rudimentary, there is a reason that economics classes use textbooks
2. Haven't read it, why would I?
3. Interesting ideals and readable for a philosophy tract, if unoriginal

>boring and rudimentary why would I read it
Your economics textbooks use a synthesis of quantity theory and Keynesianism, in addition to a neoclassical understanding of interest rate. Now, you'd read Smith if you wanted to grasp Ricardo, and therefore Henry George's Progress and Poverty, and therefore all the influential Geoists after him like Léon Walras, whose equations are utilized by Irving Fisher. It's like asking 'why should I read different philosophies if I'm a nihilist. There are like 15 different ways to look at economics.

Why would you read The Elements? For historical reasoning. And logic, reductio ad absurdism and the principle of superposition are unbelievably influential mathematic arguments. Would you like to know how Archimedes discovered Pi? Elements. The derivation of the parameter by Apollonius? Elements. It also collects a lot of mathematical thought before him by Pythagoras and
Eudoxus.

Political philosophy is always a BIT unoriginal. The most original political philosophy you're going to get is through Thucydides or Herodotus.

bad post

two seconds, holy s

He was the first impartial observer of history, and is utterly dedicated to facts. To quote:

>With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general arguments they really gave. And with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible.

That said, his focus is on how human nature responds to the horrors of war and the threats of power. He states nothing ideological, but implies everything through fact. This makes him somewhat dry at times, but the subject matter is quite interesting.
For example there are many parallels to be drawn between the Athenian hegemony and that of the US today.

Could you recommend be quality basic/beginner econ books?