Here is one list, taken from a poll of Carnegie-Mellon faculty. For most readers I would scrap Becker, Heilbroner, and Duffie; of course many other books could be added. "Paul Shiller" should be "Robert." The pointer is from Craig Newmark.
Addendum: CrookedTimber readers offer their suggestions.
I’m ashamed to say I’ve only read five of them so far (with two more waiting on my bookshelf)…
Here’s a list from Wikipedia, also including publications.
Freakonomics? So 2005.
I would add several works from Bastiat, and Sowell’s Basic Economics and Applied Economics. And of course Henry Hazlitt.
Capital Ideas by Peter Bernstein (on the origins of Modern Portfolio Theory)
The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria (explains why all wealthy countries save Singapore are democracies, while lots of democracies are poor)
The End of History by Francis Fukuyama (for the same reasons as the above; btw, Fukuyama is routinely misinterpreted ind it is indeed worth the time to read his most famous book in its entirety)
The Empire by Niall Ferguson (explains, among others, why this blog is written in English)
By “everyone”, do you mean everyone in the world? Or just economists? Or just economics graduate students? Or what?
I have read 8 of these books. I read four of the eight as a student of GMU. “How about them apples”?
I remember GMU offered a course in economic thought and its history. I think it was taught by Levy. The course started with Aristotle and moved up to modern thought using original source material. I am sorry to say I never took the course.
I saw a course similar to the GMU course I mentioned at U of Chicago.
I am surpised we have not mentioned Rothbards’s “Man, Economy, and State”, Mises “Human Action”, or Reismann’s “Capitalism”. I also like Friedman’s “Free to Choose”.
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics was written by ‘William’ Easterly, not his evil twin, Richard, as they would have you believe. Does anybody actually fact-check these things before publishing?
Bill C – thanks for the pointers on property rights books. One of my favorite topics.
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Updated link: http://www.tepper.cmu.edu/undergraduate-economics/the-well-read-economist/index.aspx
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