Books like Manias, Panics, and Crashes

01

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Michael Lewis · Economics

The Big Short is Michael Lewis's account of the 2008 financial crisis as seen through the eyes of a handful of contrarians who saw the collapse coming, bet against the American housing market, and were right.

A kindred economics read.

02

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Science

The Black Swan is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that the most consequential events in history — financial crashes, technological breakthroughs, wars, pandemics — are not predictable outliers but structurally unpredictable ones.

A kindred economics read.

03

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

Both dig into behavioral economics.

04

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

Burton G. Malkiel · Economics

A Random Walk Down Wall Street is Burton Malkiel's argument that stock prices move in a way that is effectively unpredictable, that professional fund managers cannot consistently beat the market, and that the rational response for most investors is to buy and hold a diversified index fund.

A kindred economics read.

05

Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Psychology

Fooled by Randomness is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that humans are wired to misread luck as skill, noise as signal, and random outcomes as the product of ability or effort.

A kindred economics read.

06

A Short History of Financial Euphoria

John Kenneth Galbraith · Economics

A Short History of Financial Euphoria is John Kenneth Galbraith's compressed account of speculative bubbles from the tulip mania of 1630s Holland through the 1987 US stock market crash.

Shares speculation and behavioral economics with Manias, Panics, and Crashes.

07

The Great Transformation

Karl Polanyi · Economics

The Great Transformation is Karl Polanyi's 1944 account of how a self-regulating market economy emerged in nineteenth-century England, what social catastrophe that emergence caused, and why the market society created its own political reaction.

Shares economic history and markets with Manias, Panics, and Crashes.

08

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Edwin Lefèvre · Biography

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore, the most famous speculator of the early twentieth century, told through the voice of "Larry Livingston." First published in 1923 as a series in the Saturday Evening Post, the book follows Livermore from his teenage years trading in bucket shops — illegal off-exchange betting parlors where customers wagered on price movements — through his multiple fortunes and bankruptcies on Wall Street.

Shares speculation and markets with Manias, Panics, and Crashes.

09

More Money Than God

Sebastian Mallaby · Economics

Sebastian Mallaby's history of hedge funds begins with Alfred Winslow Jones, who in 1949 invented the basic structure that still defines the industry: borrow money to buy what you think will go up, sell short what you think will go down, take a 20 percent cut of the profits.

Both dig into markets.

10

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein · Economics

Nudge is Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's argument that the way choices are presented — the default option, the order of items, the framing of a question — powerfully shapes what people decide, often more than their own stated preferences.

Both dig into behavioral economics.

11

Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity

ed. Michael Lewis · Economics

Panic is an anthology edited by Michael Lewis, collecting journalism, essays, and firsthand accounts about five major financial crises from 1987 to 2007: the Black Monday crash, the emerging markets panics of the 1990s, the Long-Term Capital Management collapse, the dot-com bust, and the early signals of the subprime mortgage crisis.

Both dig into financial crises.

12

Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises

Ray Dalio · Economics

Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises is Ray Dalio's attempt to document a template for how major debt crises unfold and how policymakers can manage them.

Both dig into financial crises.