Here is my own selection of twelve books for the ambitious sixth form economics student. Some of them are on my must-read list during the Christmas holidays (among them the Puritan Gift and Rajan’s new book – Fault Lines).

I hope there is a sufficient mix here from the updated version of Meltdown (Paul Mason’s rugged journalism on Newsnight has been a highlight throughout the year) to stunning new works on the demise of Soviet-style planned economies and life in North Korea – both highly pertinent today. John Cassidy’s book came out in 2009 and I remember reading it from cover to cover last Christmas. But it is as relevant today as then not least given the events in the Euro Zone last spring and this autumn.

1. The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream Amidst Global Financial Chaos (Kenneth and William Hopper)

2. The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as If the Future Matters (Diane Coyle), forthcoming – spring 2011

3. Red Plenty: Industry! Progress! Abundance! Inside the Fifties’ Soviet Dream. (Francis Spufford)

4. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. (Matt Ridley)

5. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. (Steven Johnson)

6. Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay (John Lanchester)

7. The Upside of Irrationality (Dan Ariely)

8. Meltdown (new edition) (Paul Mason)

9. The Fearful Rise of Markets: Short View of Global Bubbles and Synchronised Meltdowns (John Authers)

10. Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (Barbara Demick)

11. Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy (Raghuram Rajan) FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year for 2010

12. How Markets Fail (John Cassidy)