 | The Crash of 2008 and What it Means: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets by George Soros
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $1.44 2009. Fresh from the oven. Soros updates his 2008 book (see below) with four new chapters focusing directly on the 2008 Crisis with his outlook for 2009, and pushing his "paradigm" further. Only a billionaire can published books so fast!
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 | This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen M. Reinhart
Buy new: $19.97 / Used from: $34.96 2009, The Economist called it an "essential reading" though not easy to read. At least it has a one year perspective as compared from the books from the boom.
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 | Morals and Markets: An Evolutionary Account of the Modern World by Daniel Friedman
Buy new: $29.64 / Used from: $20.00 2008. Highly recommended, written for the layman to understand how markets and moral codes are always related, though sometimes they almost get divorced, as it is the case of the present financial crisis. Has an interesting chapter on financial crashes, and an excellent review of the recent Russian and Japanese market crises.
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 | Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy
Buy new: $25.60 / Used from: $20.00 2008. This book was just timely, and does not belong to the book bubble (see below). This is serious collection from several authors, with a similar approach than the new "Morals and Markets", only more formal and academic.
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 | The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
Buy new: $19.77 / Used from: $12.50 2008. Another timely book not belonging to the new book bubble. Again, a historical perspective is used to understand how the financial markets are at the heart of the development of our civilization, and bubbles always burst, but we continue making the same mistake.
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 | The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence by Benoit Mandelbrot
Buy new: $9.66 / Used from: $5.15 For those who think nobody saw the 2008 Financial Crash coming. Since the 1960s Mandelbrot discovered why financial risk modeling and its underlying theory couldn't be trusted for future forecasting, but consensus was he was wrong. 2006
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 | BUBBLES - Market Crashes Throughout History by M. van Nieuwkerk & C. Kroeze
Buy new: $29.99 2007. Presents a comprehensive analysis of nine historical financial crashes/bubbles, and a fictitous one in 2011 (Derivatives?). Good background to understand what is going on. Why if all the symptoms were there the bublle continued? We do not seem to learn from history.
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 | The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means by George Soros
Buy new: $16.32 / Used from: $0.99 2008. One more from the mini-boom, but from someone you always want to hear his opinion. Part I is a bit too philosophical, but you can jump directly to Part II to grasp in a nutshell what happened. A short book, highly recommended. An updated version was published in March 2009, see above. Includes four new chapters.
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 | The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Buy new: $17.63 / Used from: $7.50 2007. An original view about why the financial models are not trustworthy. The 2008 financial crash was definitively a Black Swan and it proved the author thesis right. However, after the Crash he has publicly declared this was not a Black Swan, but, something worst?
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 | Fixing Global Finance (Forum on Constructive Capitalism) by Martin Wolf
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $9.90 2008. A good choice to understand how financial markets work and the origins of the bubble. The present crisis is only briefly discussed near the end, as the book is based on lectures delivered before the burst.
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 | The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 by Paul Krugman
Buy new: $16.47 / Used from: $6.50 The 2008 update to the 1999 first edition from a Nobel Prize winner.
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 | Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System (Wiley Finance) by New York University Stern School of Business
Buy new: $32.97 / Used from: $27.00 Highly recommended. Written as essays by various academics. 2009
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 | Lecturing Birds on Flying: Can Mathematical Theories Destroy the Financial Markets? by Pablo Triana
Buy new: $19.77 / Used from: $13.77 2009
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 | A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation by Richard Bookstaber
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $5.53 Hardcover 2007 & Paperback 2008
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 | A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers by Lawrence G. McDonald
Buy new: $17.82 / Used from: $13.80 2009
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 | Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett
Buy new: $17.16 / Used from: $14.48 2009
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 | The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs by Charles D. Ellis
Buy new: $25.05 / Used from: $12.94 2008. An author with good luck, a book published just in time, though it does not cover the October events. This is the history of Goldman Sachs by an insider, all the way .
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 | Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity
Buy new: $18.45 / Used from: $4.85 2008. A recount of the latest five financial crises up to the still ongoing crisis.
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 | Making Sense of a Changing Economy: Technology, Markets and Morals by Edward J. Nell
Buy new: $66.74 / Used from: $37.50 1996. Now an oldie, but provides a solid background to understand the economics. Written for general audiences.
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 | Russia's Market Economy: A Bad Case of Predatory Capitalism by Stefan Hedlund
Buy new: $59.95 / Used from: $7.93 2000. This book presents the ultimate case of markets without any moral code, the transition of Russia to a market economy until its 1998 collapse.
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 | The Bubble Economy: Japan's Extraordinary Speculative Boom of the '80s and the Dramatic Bust of the '90s by Christopher Wood
Buy new: $19.95 / Used from: $17.80 2005. Wondering if this has happened before and after the Great Depression. Just check the Japanese case, during the nineties rising real estate and stock markets grew so fast until they burst. If they are still recovering, how come nobody saw it coming in the U.S.
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 | After the Crash: Architecture in Post-Bubble Japan by Thomas Daniell
Buy new: $18.21 / Used from: $13.52 |
 | Japan's Lost Decade: Origins, Consequences and Prospects for Recovery (World Economy Special Issues)
Buy new: $34.03 / Used from: $25.63 |
 | The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It by Robert J. Shiller
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $6.00 2008. This is one of the 18 books from the book mini-boom as reported by The Economist.
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 | Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal by Danny Schechter
Buy new: $13.45 / Used from: $2.05 2008. Another of the 18 books from the book mini-boom reported by The Economist.
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 | Financial Shock: A 360º Look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion, and How to Avoid the Next Financial Crisis by Mark Zandi
Buy new: $17.99 / Used from: $5.49 Another book from the mini-boom
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 | Irrational Exuberance by Robert J. Shiller
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $7.50 Another one from the mini-boom
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 | Subprime Meltdown: From U.S. Liquidity Crisis To Global Recession by Charles Brownell
Buy new: $13.45 / Used from: $10.08 Another one from the mini-boom
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