Macroeconomics Books?

[James Vermillion]

I have been taking CLEP tests since my undergrad is not in business and I will be starting some MBA classes soon (needed to take care of some prerequisites). I have taken and passes Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Financial Accounting and Principles of Management so far. I studied a bit for the macroeconomics since I had little exposure to many of the ideas and became really intrigued by a lot of it. Anybody know of any good books on Macroeconomics? I am sure many of the reads will be dry but there must be some great reads out there. Thanks in advance BP nation!

[Aaron McGinnis]

Screw Keynes. Gooooo Hayek!! (And Friedman)

I found most traditional Macroeconomic textbooks to be confusing and fairly useless, unfortunately. While maybe not a textbook-style education, I would heartily recommend "The Wealth of Nations" and "The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism" as good, baseline books to start with.

The trouble I found with the textbooks I got exposed to was that they tended to obscure the forest for the trees, so to speak. A lot of needless pontificating and not enough real information.

What I like the most about economics is that there are many different approaches (Goooo ANIMAL TOTEMS!!), and a lot of them have fairly good talking points. On the one hand, there's plenty of math to go around... on the other hand, there's plenty of abstract meta to engage even the most mathematically-challenged amongst us.

That being said, if you're aiming to impress a test... engaging the most interesting economic thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries may not be the answer to the question and you should just start memorizing Keynesian theory in a bid to regurgitate the 'right answers'

Otherwise, start reading Adam Smith, Max Weber, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand. Never again will your theories and thoughts on socioeconomic conditions be fitting conversation for the dinner table ever again. Unless you're maybe having dinner with J and I... In which case you'll either help me try the liberalism out of J, or help J try to convince me that laissez-faire capitalism will lead only to wreck and ruin. =)