I strongly recommend Acemoglu, Robinson classic book "Why Nations Fail"

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/d...

It's very accessible, no economics background required. Along with Krugman and Kahneman, one of the few economics scholars that take the time to write a book for layman.

The factor people tend to be blind to (I was) is the magnitude of the effect of historical institutions to current state of affairs. American perhaps are more blind to this than others as their institutions start at a point when the relevant research material concerns things which at that point (18th century) were already centuries old.

Old institutions affect the prosperity and quality of current institutions surprisingly much:

Hapsburg empire:

https://voxeu.org/article/habsburg-empire-and-long-half-life...

An old inca highway:

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/31/an-inca-...

LOTS of old borders which obviously demarcate centuries old polities, treaties and circles of influence (you need to know what they are to observe them in this map) - mapped nicely into how strongly higher education is inherited:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231211019890

As an example we can take Finland that has an obvious area more dark in the east than rest of the country. The funny thing is this area delineates a territory that fell under the Novgorod sphere of influence in 14th century in the treaty of Nöteborg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_N%C3%B6teborg

Daron Acemoglu has a fantastic book discussing the tenacity of historical institutions make or brake current affairs centuries after: Acemoglu: Why Nations Fail (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/d... and so on)

I recommend reading “Why Nations Fail” by Daron Acemoglu. At a very high level, nations often fail because of elite-driven rent extraction. Sometimes they don’t just fail for a few decades, they continue to spectacularly fail for centuries.

When people are forced out of their social and economic agency by a narrow elite, they will continue to be deprived of their agency long after that elite is replaced by another elite and another elite until people forget that they ever had culture and wealth. Now, I don’t think we’re seeing the worst manifestation of that in the U.S. Far from it. But it was striking to see not only how consistently problematic elite stratification is, but how good it can be to give power to the people.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307719227/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_pp...

Nice but too simplistic. The best work I have come across on the topic is: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/d...

Absolutely fantastic book:- Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/d...