As an economics teacher, I of course believe that reading more economics books is helpful for students' goal to learn economics, and of course here I mean books other than textbooks. The trouble is that, for this purpose, it is too easy to confuse a non-economics book with an economics book.
Let me emphasize. I refer to books that help us learn some economics as a subject that we can learn in high school or university. I do not mean the books must contain materials actually taught in schools. I simply mean that the materials use the scientific knowledge of economics, as exemplified by what is taught in these schools. Hence, the economics books that are qualified must involve using the economics theories or concepts in this sense. Otherwise, readers may still learn a lot about the "economies" but not necessarily about "economics".
Thus, what I am thinking of is books that are like popular science for economics. When we talk about pop-sci books for natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry or biology, we have a very clear idea about what these books are. But when we talk about pop-sci books for economics, my impression is that people are not so clear. It is in this sense that I say there is a danger.
Why things are so unclear? The answer is that in the popular culture, the word "economics" is already used too loosely and broadly, referring to anything you can imagine related to the economic or business world. The word "economics" is originally used to refer only to a specialized scientific study, as a branch of social science. However, now the term is used extremely broadly. For example, the policy package of a president or government head may not have any special economics behind. But journalists frequently call them as xxx-economics, e.g. Abenomics (for the current Japan prime minister), Clintonomics, Obamanomics, Trumponomics (for the US presidents in recent decades).
For another example, Financial Times has identified best books of 2018 for economics. But if you read the list, you can only find that these books cannot satisfy my criterion (and many of them are only business books). Although they may be good books and help readers acquire knowledge, they are not very helpful as pop-sci books in economics.
Now, if students want to read some more books, helping them learn economics, how can they choose to avoid the danger as above? On the one hand, I have recommended some books in my past posts (respectively for microeconomics, macroeconomics, and game theory). On the other hand, students should also read more, if they want to have a better economics sense, and not only for the basic stuffs and fields involved in these books.
In fact, there is a simple principle that students can use to avoid the danger mentioned in this post: choose books that are written by an economist who are still teaching economics in the department of economics in an university. The key point is, if the book is written by such an economist, they normally can teach you some economics, though not always things in current high-school or even undergraduate curriculum, but should be really about some economics concepts or principles (that might be taught in school one day). In short, you are able to learn the economics as a scientific subject from these books. Since these authors still teach economics in an economics department, it is likely they write to teach you economics, not about business (or simply business) or just about the economic world. The background of the authors can normally be found in the book. So, it is easy to implement this simple principle. But one should still notice that when an author is introduced as an economist, she or he may not be an economist in the sense mentioned above. There are many people called "economists" who work in business firms, banks, financial companies, public organizations or even a news media. Like "economics", the term "economists" is also used very loosely and broadly in the popular culture. Thus, the condition that they teach in an economics department is important. Normally those who work in an economics department would really belong to the type targeted by this post.
Of course, those who are not "economists" in the above sense may also write a book suitable for our purpose. In fact, one book that I have recommended in the past is exactly written by a journalist, not an economist in economics department. This is certainly true. However, not too many non-economists can write the economics books satisfying my criteria. Even if we miss some of them, normally this is not a big loss. Of course, I also hope that when students read more, they can also know how to choose book themselves eventually.
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