Debunking Economics

Debunking Economics by Steve Keen. Though be warned, you might not quite appreciate economic textbooks afterwards.

IMO start with a recent book that spells out useful pointers to give the classics a critical read: "Debunking Economics", by Steve Keen. Keen gave a talk at Google a few years back that was a pretty good summary of what's in the book's first version. If you're into stats and finance also check out the author's finance classes on youtube. Besides a bunch of videos that cover what's in his book, there are quite a few on financial modeling, and at least one video in there that delves into power laws and financial markets. Also, try to throw in a few history books to your mix: history of the world, of science, and of ideas. History helps contextualize and make sense of what was going on in the mind of contemporaries as economic theories matured.

That's a pretty good list, though I have to take exception to your suggestions for heterodox economics all coming from the Hayek-Mises-Rothbard Austrian/Libertarian tradition. There's considerably more to heterodox economics than Libertarian school. "Heterodox economics" is an umbrella term used to cover various approaches, schools, or traditions. These include socialist, Marxian, institutional, evolutionary, Georgist, Austrian, feminist,[3] social, post-Keynesian (not to be confused with New Keynesian),[2] and ecological economics among others.[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterodox_economics Steve Keen offers a fairly compelling criticism in Debunking Economics. Ha-Joon Chang, of LSE, has several books providing criticisms and overviews of economics, his Economics: the user's guide is a light and readable overview. http://www.worldcat.org/title/economics-the-users-guide/oclc... (http://www.worldcat.org/title/economics-the-users-guide/oclc/870896694&referer=brief_results) (It's worth noting that Ha-Joon Chang tends toward a Marxian view and in particular is a contrarian in trade and development concepts. I happen to think his views have merits.)…

Traders, Guns and Money - Satyajit Das Debunking Economics - Steve Keen The Volatility Machine - Michael Pettis

Older Stuff: The Bible/Quran, The Republic (Plato), The Social Contract (Rousseau), Tao Te Ching (Laozi), Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides) Newer Stuff: Nine Stories (Salinger), The Razor's Edge (Maugham), Nausea (Sartre), Siddartha (Hesse), Road to Serfdom (Hayek), The Book (Watts), Design of Everyday Things (Norman), Atlas Shrugged (Rand), Invisible Man (Ellison), Debunking Economics (Keen), Blood Meridian (McCarthy), The Center Cannot Hold (Saks), This Time Is Different (Reinhart/Rogoff), Infinite Jest (Wallace), Calvin and Hobbes (Watterson) All of these books are well written and have given me some perspective on interesting people/situations/ways of thinking.