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Recommend Me Economics Books

I am a student going into Year 13 and I want to read 2/3 books that I could talk about on my economics PS for UCAS. I have had a look at quite a few books that interest me and reduced it to a list of 7 so I would like to know which books are most suitable for a student as some may be too advanced for an A level student and which books would you most recommend. The list is:

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis by James Rickards
Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
Global Capitalism in Disarray: Inequality, Debt, and Austerity by Andres Solimano
The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner
Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History by Stephen D. King
The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato
Reply 1
Original post by jc_987
I am a student going into Year 13 and I want to read 2/3 books that I could talk about on my economics PS for UCAS. I have had a look at quite a few books that interest me and reduced it to a list of 7 so I would like to know which books are most suitable for a student as some may be too advanced for an A level student and which books would you most recommend. The list is:

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis by James Rickards
Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek
Global Capitalism in Disarray: Inequality, Debt, and Austerity by Andres Solimano
The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner
Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History by Stephen D. King
The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato


There isn’t really an interesting book (it’s subjective), most of the options you have are really good, because they are unique and not the common cliche economic books like ‘freakeconomics’, ‘end this depression now’ and ‘dead aid’, so probably chose a book that focuses on a topic or approach to economics that your interested in. Very well-known economists bookwork, may be harder to understand. In terms of PS, talk about what you learned from reading the book.
(edited 5 years ago)
Reply 2
Original post by akpo
There isn’t really an interesting book (it’s subjective), most of the options you have are really good, because they are unique and not the common cliche economic books like ‘freakeconomics’, ‘end this depression now’ and ‘dead aid’, so probably chose a book that focuses on a topic or approach to economics that your interested in. Very well-known economists bookwork, may be harder to understand. In terms of PS, talk about what you learned from reading the book.




Thanks for the replies, I think I'll go with Grave New World and The Value of Everything as they are fairly new books so won't be too common and unlike Piketty's book, they're not 700 pages. I was wondering whether there are any Econometric-related books that you would recommend for me as I have heard that econometrics is one of the hardest parts of economics so it would be good to have a solid base for the course.
I would recommend two books from this list: Capital in the 21st Century and The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. Both are written in plain English and would fit your needs. The first one received a lot of critical aclaim from famous economists such as Paul Krugman. It will be a good read.

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