I found "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith to be an excellent book. He explains things very well. You can tell he has done extensive analyses to back up his conclusions. Free on Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3300). I actually listened to the recording on librivox.org (read by Stephen Escalera):

http://librivox.org/the-wealth-of-nations-book-1-by-adam-smi... http://librivox.org/the-wealth-of-nations-book-2-and-3/ http://librivox.org/the-wealth-of-nations-book-4-by-adam-smi... http://librivox.org/the-wealth-of-nations-book-5-by-adam-smi...