Hazlitt. Arguably, if the book contains a course in economics condensed down to a single lesson, just read the one lesson, think about it, and move on.

The lesson is the broken window fallacy.

Myopic economic pundits will say "the shop keeper's broken window creates work for the glazier" and while that is true, the shop keeper already had a functional, intact window and therefore had no need to give the glazier work. Instead of spending that money with the glazier, the shop keeper intended to give it to the tailor in exchange for a new suit.

Had the window remained unbroken (parallel: damage not caused due to the choice of peace over war), the community would have had a window and a suit. Because the window was broken (parallel: damage caused due to the choice of war over peace), now the community lacks a suit and instead had to replace a window that was already functional.

When it comes to damage caused by war, people use this fallacy all the time that rebuilding will create jobs and will be an economic boon or whatever. The only time war related damage is good is if the damage is caused to something that is already at or beyond the end of it's useful life. If an outdated, dilapidated, difficult to maintain factory gets blown to smithereens on a bombing raid, that's perhaps a decisive end of life for a facility that was already limping and on heavy life support to remain viable,. Losing that facility to the destruction of war may not even really be a loss. In most cases, however, destruction arising from war is a loss to individuals, local populations, and the global population.