If it's of any help, I have posted the following on my blogsite this
morning based on David's quite fascinating list gathered through open
subscription on the SHOE list. It isn't everything and to everyone's
taste, but I do say this, that it seemed to me quite balanced in the
epochs of economic thought it covered and, if it is permissable to say
this, in the "ideological" backgrounds of the authors and subject
material. Anyway, this is what I posted. 

_____
If you have an interest in the history of economics, or in just
economics itself, there was a question posed on the history of economics
website the other day about what books could be recommended to someone
who wished to know more about HET. I have taken the list of books
eventually suggested and divided them into three categories. The first
is on economic themes in general, the second are histories of economics
and the third is a list of biographies. The 33 books in the three
categories are almost evenly divided into 12, 12 and 9. Based on those
that I have already read, this truly is an instructive way to find your
way into the History of Economics, although I wouldn’t touch any of
the histories for merely casual reading. But as for the rest, every one
of them seems a perfect airplane book, readable and entertaining.

Economic Themes (12)

Eric Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth

Todd G. Buchholz, New Ideas from Dead Economists

John Cassidy, How Markets Fail

Justin Fox, The Myth of the Rational Market

John K. Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty

Steve Kates, Say’s Law and the Keynesian Revolution

Michael Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism

Daniel Rodgers, Age of Fracture

Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions

Nicholas Wapshott, Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern
Economics

David Warsh, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations

Lawrence H. White, The Clash of Economic Ideas: the Great Policy
Debates
and Experiments of the Past Hundred Years


Histories of Economic Thought (12)

Roger Backhouse, The Penguin History of Economics

Roger Backhouse, The Ordinary Business of Life

William J. Barber, A History of Economic Thought (Penguin Economics)

Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect

Ray Canterbery, A Brief History of economics

Nancy Folbre, Greed, Lust and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas

John K. Galbraith, A History of Economics: the past as the present

Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers

Agnar Sandmo, Economics evolving

Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis

Mark Skousen, The Making of Modern Economics

Henry Spiegel, Growth of Economic Thought.


Biographies (9)

Gilles Campagnolo, Criticisms of Classical Political Economy. Carl
Menger, the German Historical School and the Austrian School

John Maynard Keynes, Keynes’s Essays in Biography

Thomas McCraw, Prophet of Innovation (bio of Schumpeter)

Perry Mehrling, Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance

Antoin Murphy, Richard Cantillon: Entrepreneur and Economist

Perry Mehrling, Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance

Antoin Murphy, Richard Cantillon: Entrepreneur and Economist

Sylvia Nasar, Grand Pursuit: Story of Economic Genius

Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes



Dr Steven Kates
School of Economics, Finance
    and Marketing
RMIT University
Level 12 / 239 Bourke Street
Melbourne Vic 3000

Phone: (03) 9925 5878
Mobile: 042 7297 529