Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager

In addition to Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail (2009), Diary of a Very Bad Year is one of the best books on the 2008-09 financial crisis. It is structured as a collection of interviews between an anonymous hedge fund manager and Keith Gessen, the editor of the literary magazine n+1. Gessen is intelligent but lacks a background in finance; as a result, he asks the types of basic questions that make this is a very good summary not just of what happened during the financial crisis, but more broadly about how Wall Street works. This is a book that belongs in a class with Liar's Poker and The Accidental Investment Banker in terms of explaining what really goes on at financial firms. Highly recommended.