Hope you get something online soon.
This book is an outstanding place to start. It addresses a myriad of economic concepts in simple language. It's available for free through the Mises Institute.
"How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes" by Peter Schiff http://www.amazon.com/How-Economy-Grows-Why-Crashes/dp/04705...
This book gives a simple overview of macro issues and is an interesting and well-presented tale about how economies grow from the basic "man on an island" scenario to a complex market. It also covers Austrian business cycle theory which explains the boom-bust cycle in economies.
Both of these books are from the "Austrian School" of economics, which is named for its Austrian founder, Carl Menger. I find these arguments compelling as they are firmly grounded in logic and are based on the principle that the human individual and her actions form the basis of all economic activity.
The giants of the Austrian school are Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard (highly readable) if you want to seek out more advanced theory.
Say what you want about Austrian / free market economic schools, but these people and groups predicted the financial crisis and housing bubble: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o
If you want a good introduction to economics that is 1) amenable to the perspective of an engineer (i.e., mathematical theory and significant amounts of modeling and game theory) and 2) close to how actual professional economists approach economic problems, the best free textbook is one originally authored by an economist at CalTech who is also Yahooo!'s head of an economic research team.
This is a somewhat vague statement but I'm assuming you're referring to the Austrians' "a priori" approach to economics.
> nor respected in the wider economic sphere.
Given the adversarial stance that the Austrians take toward government intervention in the economy it is no surprise that their ideas are not endorsed by academics.
Individuals should make their own judgement about the persuasiveness of the Austrian arguments and not dismiss them because they are unpopular.
If you have the time, I'd welcome a critique of any argument contained in that Hazlitt book quoted above.
One may think that string theory is sound, but still think it unwise to introduce someone to physics starting with string theory.
"Individuals should make their own judgment about the persuasiveness of Austrian arguments"
I agree with this, but it seems wiser to do so once you have some basic knowledge of more mainstream economics so that you can critically compare the two schools of thought.
All the seminal works (especially "Economics in One Lesson") are very elementary. You need no prior exposure to economics.
They say you can identify an Austrian work by flipping through it, as it will undoubtedly contain no graphs or formulas.
My fundamental point is that alternative theories are invaluable and essential, but being conservative and sticking with the mainstream is generally well-advised for beginners. Once you're confident in your grounding in the mainstream, you can approach alternatives with a critical, well-informed eye.
Whether you prefer Austrian or Keynsian approaches, FORMULAS ARE A GOOD THING.