Try the Commanding Heights website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/index.html
The countries section has some countries and brief economic histories of them. The people section is also good (click on people, then profession). The list is quite large so I recommend the following people:
Thea Lee (Labor)
Bill Clinton (Government)
Mahathir Mohamad (Government)
Lawrence Summers (Government)
Paul Volcker (Central Bankers)
Milton Friedman (Economists)
Jeffrey Sachs (Economists)
Joseph Stiglitz (Economists)
If that list is too long (and it is much smaller than the atleast 20 or 30 interviews on that site) then just read Milton Friedman and Joseph Stiglitz. They will each give you the two sides of the modern globalisation debate. However I found that once I understood what globalisation was all about the whole topic just made a lot more sense so I really do recommend you take a look at all 8 of those interviews if you get the chance.
In your course you will cover the Friedman perspective more (that's the pro-market one). He is arguably the most famous economist post World War II.