John Michael Greer's books are probably among the best on all of this, and they do a good job of outlining the interactions between peak oil and the economics that OkieM describes above. It's a little more complicated, but Greer (and others too--Gail at ourfiniteworld.com is an actuary who does the math on this in great detail) argue that the issue isn't "can we pull out enough oil to really hit the downward slope of the bell curve" but exactly the economic picture that we're seeing now: energy gets really expensive (we were *almost* back up to $100/barrel a couple of years ago), the world economy can't take it and starts to contract, which makes energy prices tank (ie a couple of years ago), which eventually is supposed to spur the economic recovery.
You may have noticed, but we're in the "undulating plateau" phase at the top of the curve, where even though energy got cheap, the recovery (globally) hasn't really happened. Canada and the US are now booming, mostly thanks to the influx of invented cash from the Feds in both cases. But in places where they didn't do that (Europe, etc), or in countries who have based their whole economies on energy, political instability from governments who can no longer pay for services their populations came to expect has been the name of the game (Venezuela anyone?). The economy is starting to push energy prices sssllloooolllyy back up, but my bet is we don't get back to $90 before they tank again because the global economy just cannot handle $100/barrel oil.
Fracking is interesting; lots of data to show that it was *just* keeping the wolves at the door in terms of meeting global demand before prices tanked, and now prices are so low for NG that here, at least (though I hear Australia and other places too), new projects won't get off the ground. When carbon taxes (globally, not necessarily in the US, obviously) start to take the huge methane leaks into account, we'll see if fracking really ever becomes profitable again...if it ever was.
There are big wildcards for sure in climate change policy and the push towards electric everything, but it's going to be a bumpy ride, IMO.
Re: other books, the Rob Hopkins stuff is good, basic, practical info, and Richard Heinberg at the Postcarbon Institute has done a ton of detailed research and writing over the years.
Economist Jeff Rubin did a book on oil issues a couple of years ago called The End of Growth, and Canada's own Andrew Nikoforuk did excellent work with The Energy of Slaves. As an Alberta-based investigative journalist, he has skin in the game. :)
Enjoy the journey!