The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy

Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy

Barry Ritholtz, Bill Fleckenstein, Aaron Task · 332 pages

An engaging look at what led to the financial turmoil we now find ourselves in Bailout Nation offers one of the clearest looks at the financial lenders, regulators, and politicians responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. Written by Barry Ritholtz, one of today's most popular economic bloggers and a well-established industry pundit, this book skillfully explores how the United States evolved

Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone And No One Can Pay

John Lanchester · 240 pages

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

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy

Raghuram G. Rajan · 283 pages

https://archive.org/details/faultlineshowhid0000raja/page/n7/ 2010006031 Printed on acid-free paper. https://archive.org/details/faultlineshowhid0000raja/page/n279/ 978-0-691-14683-6

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis

James Rickards · 288 pages

In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon. Currency wars are one of the most destructive and fear

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash

Charles R. Morris · 256 pages

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

The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire

Neil Irwin · 448 pages

Explores the work of the world's most powerful central bankers-- --Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank--offering a view from the cockpit of the global economy as the three men struggled to keep it from going down.

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

Timothy F. Geithner · 592 pages

From the former Treasury Secretary, the definitive account of the unprecedented effort to save the U.S. economy from collapse in the wake of the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Confidence Men

Ron Suskind · 515 pages

Draws on hundreds of hours of interviews and in-depth research to relate the complete story of the nation's financial meltdown, from the trading floors of lower Manhattan to the power corridors inside the Beltway.

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/

After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead

Alan S. Blinder · 476 pages

Many fine books on the financial crisis were first drafts of history--books written quickly to fill the need for immediate understanding. Alan S. Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, held off, taking the time to understand the crisis and create a truly comprehensive and coherent narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the governm

Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom

Bob Woodward · 279 pages

All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera · 389 pages

According to the authors, both business journalists, no one has put all the pieces of the financial crisis together. This title explores the motivations of everyone from CEOs and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers and Wall Street traders. It goes back more than twenty years to reveal, how Wall Street, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought t

The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

David A. Stockman · 743 pages

Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

Robert Z. Aliber · 397 pages

Since its introduction in 1978, this book has charted and followed the volatile world of financial markets. Charles Kindleberger's brilliant, panoramic history revealed how financial crises follow a pattern. Events of recent years and the current Eurozone continue to dominate policy and headline debates around the globe. In this updated and expanded seventh edition, Robert Z. Aliber probes the mos

This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

Carmen M. Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff · 487 pages

The Myth of the Rational Market: Wall Street's Impossible Quest for Predictable Markets

Justin Fox · 382 pages

Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

Liaquat Ahamed · 564 pages

With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth centuryIt is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one p

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

Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street

Neil Barofsky · 279 pages

In this account of his stranger-than-fiction baptism into the corrupted ways of Washington, Neil Barofsky offers an irrefutable indictment, from an insider of the Bush and Obama administrations, of the mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. In behind-the-scenes detail, he reveals proof of the extreme degree to which our government officials bent over backward to serve the interests of

The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism

David Harvey · 256 pages

The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable

James Owen Weatherall · 295 pages

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