Simulacra and Simulation is heavy going but lays the philosophical groundwork for "The Matrix". The phrase "Desert of the Real" comes from this book. If you don't feel like reading it (I confess I didn't get very far), you can get a good idea of what it is trying to say by just doing a Google search on the title and finding discussions of it. If you include the word "Matrix" in the search, you can find discussions specifically relating the book and movie.
I'm not familiar with this PARTICULAR evolutionary psychology book, but (as one might expect) this field in general deals with the evolutionary basis for human behavior. This is important for understanding The Matrix for (at least) two reasons: First, this field tries to understand the nature of perception -- i.e., how we "see" what we "see". It also studies how our ability to perceive the world is limited by our evolutionary history (one simple example is that many fish can perceive electromagnetic fields but we can't). These ideas are important to understanding "The Matrix" because they explain how manipulation of the electrical signals in our brains (occurring while being jacked in) could make us believe that a simulated world was real.
A second reason that evolutionary psychology is important to understanding The Matrix is that impinges directly on the question of "free choice" -- perhaps we THINK we are making free choices, but really, the chemistry of our bodies and brains determines how we respond to things happening in the outside world. "Cause and effect" -- remember how the Merovingian was manipulating the woman in the restaurant?