Discover your Inner Economist, Tyler Cowen

Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond 

Farewell to Alms, Greg Clark

Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman

Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz

The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier

Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women, Claudia Goldin

Pragmatic Economics, George Akerlof (Berkeley Prof; a collection of his papers, most/all of which are on-line. Still, worth reading.)

Advances in Behavioral Economics, ed. Camerer, Loenstein, Rabin (Berkeley Prof)

Golden Fetters, Barry Eichengreen (Berkeley Prof)

The Age of Turbulance, Alan Greenspan

White Man's Burden, William Easterly (His earlier book, The Elusive Quest for Growth is also very interesting, but a little dated.)

Development and Freedom, Amartya Sen

The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki

Your Money or Your Life, David Cutler 

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn


The Heavies: (don't get bogged down in these)

General Theory, Keynes 

Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

Capital, Karl Marx 

 

Just for fun:

Surely you are Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman (okay, he is not an economist. but he makes dorky intellectualism and research seem so exciting!)

 

Periodicals/Blogs: (there are obviously way more blogs of interest than I mention here.)

Brad Delong's Webpage, delong.typepad.com (Berkeley Prof)

Becker/Posner, www.becker-posner-blog.com

The Economist