1. Financial Shock(FT Press, 2009)Mark Zandi In addition to an explanation of the financial crisis, Zandi offers advice for those hoping to weather the financial crisis, the politicians and policy-makers looking to change regulatory oversight laws, and investors aiming to anticipate future bubbles.

2. Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation(Free Press, 2009)Daniel Gross Gross’ frank account of just how “dumb” we were with our money makes evaluating the financial meltdown with our current knowledge even more painful. Despite any impulse you may develop while reading to kick yourself for lack of foresight, this book is important to understanding how we can avoid future crises and remembering our banks and institutions are far from perfect.

3. Fixing Global Finance(The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)Martin Wolf For an international perspective on the crisis, take a look at Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf’s newest book. Without oversimplifying or making generalizations, Wolf explains the global imbalances that led to the collapse and how we’ve seen it before but can avoid experiencing it again. Really, we can.

4. The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit CrashCharles Morris(Public Affairs, 2008) Morris begins with the shifting ideologies of the last 40 years and continues into the 21st century, employing necessary technical terms to explain the complex origins of the financial crisis. As a former banker, Morris’ perspective is balanced, honest, and informed.

5. The Looting of America(Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2009)Les Leopold Leopold does not hesitate to place the blame for our nation’s financial woes on Wall Street. After his diagnosis of what made us sick he offers bold, clear, and plausible solutions to help recuperate and reform an ailing and perverse system.

6. A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression(Harvard University Press, 2009)Richard A. Posner Posner, with the privilege of 20/20 hindsight, provides a non-technical and incredibly clear explanation of what caused our current financial crisis as well as two means of correction, both of which relate back to the two theories used to explain the cause of the Great Depression.

7. Pump and Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy(Rutgers University Press, 2008)Robert H. Tillman, Michael L. Ingdergaard Tillman and Ingdergaard point to the rising scandals of companies such as Enron as indicators of where our economy is headed. They explain why it took this turn and what the corrupting factors were, emphasizing the control a handful of elites have over our largest institutions and the damage their selfish short-term interests do to the majority of Americans.

8. Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy(Wiley, 2009) Barry Ritholtz Outlining more clearly how taxpayers are affected by the corrupt relationships between politicians, corporations, and banks, Ritholtz explains how we’ve morphed into a nation that caters to the whims of the powerful whether it entails deregulating when convenient or bailing them out when they fail.

9. The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It(Princeton University Press, 2008)Robert Shiller If you’re looking for ways to solve the innumerable problems facing our economy, this is the book. Shiller suggests specific short-term action as well as detailed long term planning and strategy to get us out of this mess.

10. Foreclosed: High-Risk Lending, Deregulation, and the Undermining of America's Mortgage Market(Cornell University Press, 2009)Dan Immergluck Immergluck’s book addresses the combination of factors that led to the financial crisis from systematic deregulation to “exotic” (and dubious) home mortgage lending. He also investigates how government is dealing with this crisis at the local, state, and federal level concluding with recommendations on how to form sustainable and reasonable housing finance rules.

11. Borrowing to Live: Consumer and Mortgage Credit Revisited (Brookings Institution Press and Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2008)Nicolas P. Retsinas, Eric S. Belsky This collaborative effort focuses on consumer and mortgage credit as it relates to the financial meltdown. It looks to flawed past policies for explanation and suggests ways to build healthy and safe relationships with credit.

12. House of Cards(Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009)William Cohan Using the epic collapse of Bear Stearns as a window into the cause of the entire financial crisis, Cohan provides a personal and intense perspective on the disintegration of a financial powerhouse.

13. Irrational Exuberance: Second Edition(Princeton University Press, 2005)Robert J. Shille The second edition of Irrational Exuberance further analyzes the economic boom, or as Shiller would argue, speculative bubble of 1982-1995. Its arguments are clearly delineated in five parts ranging from structural flaws, cultural influences, psychological factors, and more which cumulated in the boom. This edition, published in 2005, includes analysis of the real estate bubble and was among the earliest books to warn of the subprime mortgage fiasco of 2007.