The cheap credit available from 2002 to 2008 radically transformed societies worldwide, with Icelanders tossing aside their fishing gear to become bankers, for instance. Then the crunch came, and many of these societies are stumbling about as part of the new Third World.' As a greedy debtor nation, we're not so far behind.--"Library Journal."

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.

""The deepest economic crisis in eighty years prompted a shallow revival of Marxism," writes Benjamin Kunkel of the 2008 recession--and the shallowness was undoubtedly a result of the complex, sometimes difficult nature of contemporary Marxist thought. Enter Kunkel's Utopia or Bust, which leads the uninitiated reader through the biggest names in critical political theory today. Written with the wit and verve of a novelist, Utopia or Bust engages...

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 government did to fight it, and what we must do from here--mired...

"From the chief economic commentator for the Financial Times, a brilliant tour d'horizon of the new global economy and its trajectory There have been many books that have sought to explain the causes and courses of the financial and economic crisis which began in 2007-8. The Shifts and the Shocks is not another detailed history of the crisis, but the most persuasive and complete account yet published of what the crisis should teach us about modern...

"Why Western capitalism is broken and how the U.S. can recover its global economic leadership status. The governments and central banks of the developed world have tried every policy tool imaginable, yet our economies remain sluggish, or worse. How did we get here, and how can we emerge from the longest downturn in recent memory? Daniel Alpert, a progressive Wall Street banker and economist, argues that we are living in the age of oversupply....

"The 10 Rules of Successful Nations offers a pithy guide to real-world economics, adapted from the New York Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of Nations. A wake-up call to economists who failed to foresee every recent crisis, including the cataclysm of 2008, The 10 Rules of Successful Nations is a slim primer full of pioneering insights on the political, economic, and social habits of successful nations. Distilled from Sharma's quarter century traveling...