Looking for books on economics: part 0

When I decided to seriously teach myself economics, I started looking for books that one might describe as economics for mathematicians. The problem is that most books on mathematical economics (if not all, from what I've seen) are more aptly described as mathematics for economists because they assume a broad knowledge of economic phenomena, terminology, and even the history of economic thought, which I lack, and introduce mathematical techniques with which I am already familiar. The epitome of this situation is Paul Samuelson's classic Foundations of Economic Analysis. Initially I wanted to stay away from freshman economic textbooks because freshman textbooks are usually verbose, bulky, distractingly colourful and overpriced, but after briefly taking the high road I eventually settled on borrowing Samuelson's Economics textbook, which seems to be the all-time best-selling economics book, from the library.

I'll come back to my literature search later.