The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.

Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America

Greg Farrell · 471 pages

This book tells the intimate, fly-on-the wall tale of the decline and fall of an American icon. With one notable exception, the firms that make up what we know as Wall Street have always been part of an inbred, insular culture that most people only vaguely understand. The exception was Merrill Lynch, a firm that revolutionized the stock market by bringing Wall Street to Main Street, setting up off

The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders

Connie Bruck · 385 pages

During the '80s, Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham created the corporate raiders. He was the billionaire Junk Bond King. But, in the corner stood the U.S. District Attorney waiting to file criminal and racketeering charges.

Business Adventures

John Brooks · 400 pages

The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

Ron Chernow · 812 pages

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

Bryan Burrough, John Helyar · 592 pages

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story

Kurt Eichenwald · 776 pages

The Reckoning

David Halberstam · 786 pages

Compares and contrasts two companies, Ford and Nissan, from the founders and owners right down to the men on the assembly line.

When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

Roger Lowenstein · 281 pages

"John Meriwether, a famously successful Wall Street trader, spent the 1980s as a partner at Salomon Brothers, establishing the best - and the brainiest - bond arbitrage group in the world. A mysterious and shy midwesterner, he knitted together a group of Ph.D.-certified arbitrageurs who rewarded him with filial devotion and fabulous profits. Then, in 1991, in the wake of a scandal involving one of

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

Andrew Ross Sorkin · 600 pages

A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami. From inside the corner office at Lehman Brothers to secret meetings in South Korea, and the

Chocolate Wars: From Cadbury to Kraft - 200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry

Deborah Cadbury · 384 pages

In the early nineteenth century Richard Cadbury sent his son, John, to London to study a new and exotic commodity: cocoa. Within a generation, John's sons had created a chocolate company to rival the great English firms of Rowntree and Fry. All three firms were Quaker family enterprises, and their business aims were infused with religious idealism. As chocolate companies raced to compete around th

Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success

Lisa Endlich · 336 pages

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute

Zac Bissonnette · 266 pages

"A bestselling journalist delivers the never-before-told story of the plush animal craze that became the tulip mania of the 1990s . In the annals of consumer crazes, nothing compares to Beanie Babies. In just three years, collectors who saw the toys as a means of speculation made creator Ty Warner, an eccentric college dropout, a billionaire-without advertising or big-box distribution. Beanie Babi

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

Rana Foroohar · 388 pages

"Eight years on from the biggest market meltdown since the Great Depression, the key lessons of the crisis of 2008 still remain unlearned--and our financial system is just as vulnerable as ever. Many of us know that our government failed to fix the banking system after the subprime mortgage crisis. But what few of us realize is how the misguided financial practices and philosophies that nearly top

More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite

Sebastian Mallaby · 482 pages

Based on unprecedented access to the industry, including three hundred hours of interviews, economist/journalist Sebastian Mallaby tells the inside story of hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s and 1970s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of 21st century capitalism. Ken Griffin started

The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It's Transforming the American Economy

Charles Fishman

Panic!: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity

Michael Lewis · 396 pages

Thanks to W.W. Norton for their lovely cover image on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwnorton/4050085133/

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers

Lawrence G. McDonald, Patrick Robinson · 351 pages

One of the biggest questions of the financial crisis has not been answered until now. What happened at Lehman Brothers and why was it allowed to fail, with aftershocks that rocked the global economy? In this news-making, often astonishing book, a former Lehman Brothers Vice President gives us the straight answers--right from the belly of the beast.In A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, Larry McDo

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

Alice Schroeder · 1,255 pages

Here is THE book recounting the life and times of one of the most respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing

The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, The Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals

Frank Partnoy · 280 pages

At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish emigre Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after Kreuger's suicide in 1932, the true nature of his empire emerged. Driven by success to adopt ever-more perilous practices, Kreuger had turned to shell

Sam Walton: Made In America

Sam Walton, John Huey · 272 pages

Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of America's heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, Sam never lost the common touch. Here, finally, inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure if his ambitions and achie

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King

Rich Cohen · 270 pages

When Samuel Zemurray arrived in America in 1891, he was tall, gangly, and penniless. When he died in the grandest house in New Orleans sixty-nine years later, he was among the richest, most powerful men in the world. In between, he worked as a fruit peddler, banana hauler, dockside hustler, and plantation owner. He battled and conquered the United Fruit Company, becoming a symbol of the best and w

How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In

James C. Collins · 222 pages

Discusses signs pointing toward the decline of a business, how far the decline can proceed before failure becomes inevitable, and crucial steps companies can take to reverse course.

The House of Rothschild, Vol 1: Money's Prophets, 1798-1848

Niall Ferguson · 596 pages

This second volume of Niall Ferguson's acclaimed, landmark history of the legendary Rothschild banking dynasty concludes his myth-breaking portrait of one of the most powerful and fascinating families of modern times. With all the depth, clarity and drama with which he traced the Rothschild's ascent, Ferguson shows how their power waned as conflicts from Crimea to the Second World War repeatedly t

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City

Greg Grandin · 432 pages

The stunning, never-before-told story of the quixotic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon, "Fordlandia" depicts a desperate quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did much to dispatch.