Popular economics is fun, applying economic models and tools to figure out human behavior.  Books like Freakonomics and Naked Economics are easy to read (I’d also recommend the decidedly less easy, but brief and lucid Economics in One Lesson).  Here’s an article about young (32-year old) Harvard economist Ben Olken, who has discovered, among other things:

• Assassinations of autocratic leaders usually leads to democracy.  Assassinations of democratic leaders usually have no effect.
• Democratic leaders have very little effect on economies, even when they die in office.
• The clarity of your TV-antenna reception in Indonesia is directly correlative to your lack of participation in social institutions.

If you liked any of those books mentioned about, keep reading.