RECOMMENDED ECONOMICS READING. Paul at Truck and Barter has a list of economics books for the casual reader (although these work pretty well as class readings if you know what you're doing). I concur in part and dissent in part. P. J. O'Rourke's Eat the Rich (details or compare prices) ought to be on the list, although the beginning reader ought not start with that one. Alchian and Allen's long-out-of-print University Economics is also good, and Milton Friedman's Economist's Protest is an excellent collection of his columns from the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he was on the outside looking in. On the other hand, Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers is not as bad as Thomas Sowell makes it to be. It gives the reader a good sense of the Keynesian and Welfare Economics Paradigm consensuses of the late 1960s and early 1970s.