Reddit reviews Lives of the Laureates: Twenty-three Nobel Economists (The MIT Press)

non-Austrian economics is not a 'type' of economics - rather, the normal economics sub-reddit became swamped with adherents of this basically completely fringe quasi-philosophical, very political, and anti-scientific Austrian 'economics'. The wiki article for it is quite charitable. Basically you can discount about half of all comments in the main subreddit right off the bat.

Trying to think of non-text-books, not-too-mathematical books that are general in scope, fun to read, and minimise politicking...difficult

John McMillan, Reinventing the Bazaar - explanation of the limits and power of markets with many examples

Todd Buchholz, New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought - a sort of history of economists with a heavy emphasis on their thoughts and contributions using real world examples to illustrate

William Breit and Barry T. Hirsch, Lives of the Laureates - essays by many of the most highly-acclaimed recent economists mostly sort of mixed idea and personal life stories.

Hope these help. Have fun.

If you're interested for your own interest and not for college, I'd recommend starting with books written for a general audience like

The Cartoon Introduction to Economics

Freakonomics

The Armchair Economist

Spin Free Economics

Lastly, Lives of the Laureates offers biographical accounts of 23 Nobel Laureates in Economics. I find it interesting since it offers insights into the minds of the Laureates, their intellectual process, and some of the most important contributions within the economics community.

I also often recommend Economics in the Afterlife to people since it shows that economists have no shame and economics can really be applied to anything.

You could probably find PDFs online of some of these books if you were so inclined.