Economics Gangsters by Ray Fisman and Ted Miguel is a terrific book mainly about why bad governments and corruption wreck economics – some great examples of applied economics in action. There's a review of it in the next edition of The Business Economist. Romesh tells me it's one of the books featured in the VoxEU podcast – they do books from time to time. If you're interested, here's the link:
http://www.voxeu.eu/index.php?q=node/1260