Huge fan of Sowell here. One of the few voices of common sense in this symphonic world of muddled thinking. One of the best books on economic thinking that I've ever read was "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. It's simple, concise, and is comprehendable by an 7th grader.

You're asking a lot.

I suggest going to www.mises.org and reading through some of the material.

Also, check out this book called Human Action which you can download in PDF format for free. It is certainly a good place to start. www.mises.org/humanaction.asp

Good luck and I hope you report back your findings.

The majority of all Economic thinking taught in U.S. Universities are of the neoclassical school. Neoclassical economics emphasizes analysis at the margin (marginal utility, marginal product of capital/labor, etc) coupled with highly mathematical models. Fanatical belief in general equilibrium. Probably the most influential neoclassist in the 20th century is Paul Samuelson. Unless all you've read in economic literature are Adam Smith and David Ricardo, you're probably familiar neoclassical economics and just don't know it. Hope that helped.

The top-dog Classical Economists were:
Adam Smith
David Ricardo
Karl Marx

The neo-classical revolution began with the economist Alfred Marshall - and set the stage for Keynesian thought.

The difference between the classical and neo-classical thought versus Austrian thought ultimately comes down to value theory - one of my favorite subjects.

Adam Smith and David Ricardo advocated a sort of "labor theory of value" to explain how goods and services aquire their value (it was a cause of great hand-wringing for them, you could tell). Marx took the labor theory of value and ran with it - literally the entire marxist/communist doctrine is dependant upon this value theory.

In the late 19th century, Carl Menger was one of a small handful of economists to discover "marginal value" (William Jevons and Leon Walrus were the other two) - introducing the "subjective theory of value" to the discpline - and ultimately debunking the entirety of Marxian theory (the universities refuse to let it die, though it should be a long dead school of thought).

Menger took the marginal value theory and created a whole new school of thought - thus creating the Austrian School of Economics. He would eventually mentor the revolutionary Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, who would mentor the great Ludwig von Mises(the true giant of the austrian school), who would mentor Frederich von Hayek and Murrary Rothbard.

If you ever want to look into value theory - it can be quite intersting and amazingly insightful. Let me know what you find..