<p>Hi, I am very interested in economics and politics and want to major in them when in college. Would you please recommend some books for me to read before college? </p>
<p>Thank you so much.</p>
<p>Freakonomics is a lot of fun. :)</p>
<p>My son was required to read "New Ideas from Dead Economists" before taking AP Econ. It goes thru the main theories of many of the most influential economists - definitely worth reading.</p>
<p>Also Freakonomics - a good read even for non-econ types.</p>
<p>Naked Economics is an easy to read book that covers all major macro and micro topics in an entertaining little book.</p>
<p>The World is Flat...</p>
<p>Oh yes, and if you don't have one already, get a subscription to The Economist.</p>
<p>Yes, my son read* New Ideas too. How about *Collapse?</p>
<p>More votes for Freakonomics and The World is Flat. (I recommended The World is Flat to my son before he started college selection. He since recommended it to his debate buddies. Son#2 will be reading it this summer) The Tipping Point is also worthwhile.</p>
<p>The End of Poverty by J. Sachs</p>
<p>Free to Choose, Milton Friedman
Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman
Road to Serfdom, Hayek</p>
<p>I'll put in another vote for Freakonomics and definitely for a subscription to The Economist, a weekly newsmag with a largely, but not exclusively, European slant.</p>
<p>48 laws of power, by Greene</p>
<p>and his other books, art of seduction and strategies of war</p>
<p>Plato's Repubic
Native Son
Babbit
The Making of the President
The Powerbroker
The Streets were Paved with Gold</p>
<p>The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization by Thomas L. Friedman</p>
<p>The Jungle</p>
<p>Economics and politics? How about a couple books by Ayn Rand?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers is a well-worn guide to major economic thinkers and movements.</p></li>
<li><p>Hernando de Soto is a free-market-loving Peruvian who has written some extremely interesting books on the importance of markets in the third world: The Other Path (a fascinating analysis of "black" markets, their importance to the poor, and their relationship to regulation), and The Mystery of Capital.</p></li>
<li><p>You can't go wrong trying to read Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy, and Karl Marx's Capital (vol. 1) or Grundrisse. Marx's economics is very tough slogging, though.</p></li>
<li><p>A team of well-known economists have written several mystery novels under the pseudonym Marshall Jevons, whose sleuthing hero is a Harvard economics professor. They are fun explications of some basic classical economics concepts.</p></li>
<li><p>In the legal world, perhaps no book in the past 50 years has been more influential than Richard Posner's Economic Analysis of Law. It is very well-written, and accessible to a layperson willing to pay attention.</p></li>
<li><p>Volume 2 of Fernand Braudel's massive Civilization and Capitalism 1500-1800 is called The Wheels of Commerce, and it is a fascinating overview of the emergence of capitalism and market economies in Europe (and their non-emergence elsewhere).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond, is a recent classic. His later book, Collapse, already mentioned here, is very good as well.</p>
<p>
Naked Economics is an easy to read book that covers all major macro and micro topics in an entertaining little book.
I second this recommendation.</p>
<p>"Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich</p>
<p>This columnist disguised herself for a year to work in blue collar jobs to
experience how a minimum wage life translates in a family's day-to-day decisions, ended up in a trailer park, is able to articulate a life that the majority experiences in the U.S. But SHE can write it up. </p>
<p>ALSO: other books by Ms. Ehrenreich</p>
<p>ALSO: My S liked "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm...somebody.</p>
<p>Haven't Judge Posner's ideas been dismissed by conservatives and liberals alike? Of course, that doesn't mean that his writings shouldn't be discussed. Also, I second the notion of reading Ehrenrich's "Nickel and Dimed" for a student trying to understand the modern American economy at the ground level.</p>