Reddit reviews The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas

I would recommend these:

• The Economic Naturalist by Robert H. Frank. It's a collection of explanations about microeconomics and industrial production (for example: why are milk cartons rectangular while cans are cylindrical? why do DVDs and CDs have different kinds of cases? why are supermodels paid so much?).
  
  
• The New Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace. Many lists feature short anecdotes you might enjoy.
  
  
• Schott's Original Miscellany by Ben Schott. It's not properly a "trivia book", it's a hodgepodge of charts, tables and lists that cover pretty much every possible topic, from the types of clouds to the slang used by the British gay subculture to the flag of Guadeloupe. By the way, every book by Schott is worth reading.
  
  Surely, there are others I've read and I don't remember at the moment.

Like mind_grapes said, if you really want to understand economics, you have to dive into a textbook. There's no shortcuts.

The best poular introduction IMO is is Robert Frank's The Economics Naturalist:

> Why do the keypads on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? Why are round-trip fares from Orlando to Kansas City higher than those from Kansas City to Orlando? For decades, Robert Frank has been asking his economics students to pose and answer questions like these as a way of learning how economic principles operate in the real world--which they do everywhere, all the time.Once you learn to think like an economist, all kinds of puzzling observations start to make sense. Drive-up ATM keypads have Braille dots because it's cheaper to make the same machine for both drive-up and walk-up locations. Travelers from Kansas City to Orlando pay less because they are usually price-sensitive tourists with many choices of destination, whereas travelers originating from Orlando typically choose Kansas City for specific family or business reasons.The Economic Naturalist employs basic economic principles to answer scores of intriguing questions from everyday life, and, along the way, introduces key ideas such as the cost benefit principle, the "no cash left on the table" principle, and the law of one price. There is no more delightful and painless way of learning these fundamental principles.

Because it's easier to manufacture one type of ATM machine rather than making separate machines for drive-through (AKA an economic explanation). I'm currently reading this, and it has a ton of great economic explanations for everyday questions like that