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Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was born in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. A prolific writer, he wrote two seminal works (Socialism and Theory of Money And Credit) before fleeing the Nazis. While living in Switzerland, he published an early version of this work in German in 1940. Over time, Mises added to it and rewrote it in English. Yale University Press published Human Action in 1949.

From the Publisher:

His masterpiece:

His name was Ludwig von Mises, and he was the fountainhead of the Renaissance of Capitalism. Throughout his long life Mises was a man with a mission, and he came closer to realizing it than we have any right to expect from a mere mortal. His ambition was to completely reconstruct economics along the lines hinted at by his mentor, Carl Menger, and then to rebuild a foundation for the defense of capitalism. In successfully doing so, he became one of the great benefactors of modern civilization.
Mises produced many great works, but Human Action was his masterpiece. Late in life according to his wife Margit, Mises would often sit holding the book, thumbing through it, with a quiet sense of pride. Its subtitle is "A Treatise on Economics," but we have to remember that, for Mises, economics encompassed virtually all of "human action." Thus this mild-mannered treatise often burst its bounds, taking in the theory of knowledge and other profoundly important philosophical issues, the nature of man, points in anthropology, the higher reaches of political theory, the grand sweep of history, and crucially important issues of the day. And--oh, yes--economics itself, from the ground up. In its scope and sweep, no other twentieth century work in the social sciences can touch it.

A masterful edifice:

Why is Human Action called a "treatise?" Because it begins by establishing certain basic principles and proceeds by building an entire edifice on them, block by block. Some people have found the opening couple of chapters difficult and intimidating, because they deal with technical issues of methodology in the social sciences. Go ahead and skip them the first time around if you like - they'll make more sense on a later reading. And the rest of the book is crystal clear on its own terms.

Mises begins quickly enough with the basic principles of human action as purposeful behavior, how we rank values, establish ends and means, and engage in productive work to achieve our goals. He moves on to analyze the nature of social cooperation, criticize the collectivist concept of society, and establish the principles behind the division of labor, the law of association, and exchange. We learn how money develops, and how it functions as an aid to cognition. Then he explicates the basic principles underlying the market economy, the nature of prices and indirect exchange, the advanced money economy, exchange through time, and the origins of interest, rent and profit.

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