I will resist the urge to tell you what NOT to read and merely recommend a few favorites:
1. I am a big fan of John Kenneth Galbraith, who writes very clearly about a few things. I recommend both "The New Industrial State" and especially "The Affluent Society", where he argues that economics is insufficient to deal with post-scarcity.
2. Deirdre McCloskey's "If You're So Smart" is a great skewering of the blinkered nature of economic inquiry. Much of what is wrong with economics is what is wrong with scientific inquiry generally (being stuck in a formalism, confusing their models with reality); this is an excellent criticism.
3. Anything by Ha-Joon Chang. He writes intelligently about development and globalization; he is unorthodox in his economic practice, and his arguments are simple and drawn from history. There are a lot of "My god, it's full of stars!" moments in his work.
1. I am a big fan of John Kenneth Galbraith, who writes very clearly about a few things. I recommend both "The New Industrial State" and especially "The Affluent Society", where he argues that economics is insufficient to deal with post-scarcity.
2. Deirdre McCloskey's "If You're So Smart" is a great skewering of the blinkered nature of economic inquiry. Much of what is wrong with economics is what is wrong with scientific inquiry generally (being stuck in a formalism, confusing their models with reality); this is an excellent criticism.
3. Anything by Ha-Joon Chang. He writes intelligently about development and globalization; he is unorthodox in his economic practice, and his arguments are simple and drawn from history. There are a lot of "My god, it's full of stars!" moments in his work.
4. Still looking...