Here are 97 books that Anglo Republic fans have personally recommended if you like
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There’s something clinical and yet human about big financial crises, especially those that involve some kind of trickery or fraud. I’ve always been fascinated by this dark side of the world of money, and have been fortunate enough in my career to have had ring-side seats at a few such events in rich and poor countries. Fraud is not at the heart of the “social contrivance of money” but the monetary system is built on an edifice of trust that can all too easily be abused by scammers. From these episodes, we can learn a lot about people, credit, and society’s ways of protecting itself.
From my reading of Frank Partnoy’s book, I get the impression that Swedish celebrity financier Ivar Kreuger did really start out as a skillful and legitimate businessman, negotiating exclusive rights to sell matches in a range of central and Eastern European countries in the 1920s and early 1930s.
But, as so often happens, when business became more difficult in the 1930s, his elaborate financial activities gradually morphed into recklessness and fraud.
At the height of the roaring '20s, Swedish emigre Ivar Kreuger made a fortune raising money in America and loaning it to Europe in exchange for matchstick monopolies. His enterprise was a rare success story throughout the Great Depression. Yet after his suicide in 1932, it became clear that Kreuger was not all he seemed: evidence surfaced of fudged accounting figures, off-balance-sheet accounting, even forgery. He created a raft of innovative financial products, many of them precursors to instruments wreaking havoc in today's markets. In this gripping financial biography, Frank Partnoy recasts the life story of a remarkable yet forgotten…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
There’s something clinical and yet human about big financial crises, especially those that involve some kind of trickery or fraud. I’ve always been fascinated by this dark side of the world of money, and have been fortunate enough in my career to have had ring-side seats at a few such events in rich and poor countries. Fraud is not at the heart of the “social contrivance of money” but the monetary system is built on an edifice of trust that can all too easily be abused by scammers. From these episodes, we can learn a lot about people, credit, and society’s ways of protecting itself.
I found this book to be not only an astonishing story of outright fraud and theft, but one which raises unexpected questions about the nature and function of money.
A confidence trickster managed to persuade the eminent banknote printing company Waterlow to reprint and give him a large stock of Bank of Portugal escudo banknotes, which he proceeded to spend.
Learning how the scam was uncovered is fascinating in itself, but even more intriguing is the question of who lost from this scam, and by how much.
There’s something clinical and yet human about big financial crises, especially those that involve some kind of trickery or fraud. I’ve always been fascinated by this dark side of the world of money, and have been fortunate enough in my career to have had ring-side seats at a few such events in rich and poor countries. Fraud is not at the heart of the “social contrivance of money” but the monetary system is built on an edifice of trust that can all too easily be abused by scammers. From these episodes, we can learn a lot about people, credit, and society’s ways of protecting itself.
I have always wondered whether John Law, the creator of the ill-fated Mississippi System that brought the financial system of France to its knees in 1720, a genius who understood money better than anyone before him, or a deluded fantasist who had learnt just enough to create a monetary weapon of mass destruction?
In his careful and well-researched account, Antoin Murphy leans towards the first interpretation, but he offers enough information to allow the reader to form their own conclusions.
John Law (1671-1729) left a remarkable legacy of economic concepts from a time when economic conceptualization was very much at an embryonic stage. Yet he is best known-and generally dismissed-today as a rake, duellist, and gambler. This intellectual biography offers a new approach to Law, one that shows him to have been a significant economic theorist with a vision that he attempted to implement as policy in early-eighteenth-century Europe.
Law's style, marked by a clarity and use of modern terminology, stands out starkly against the turgid prose of many of his contemporaries. His vision of a monetary and financial system…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I started writing about bitcoin and cryptocurrency for the funny dumb crook stories. It was ridiculous and arrogant in a particular way that needed and needs puncturing. Somehow this turned into a second job as a finance journalist specialising in the area. The crypto promoters are reprehensible, but their self-sabotaging foolishness makes their comeuppance extremely satisfying. I feel I’m making the world a better place with this.
Davies’ Lying For Money lays out a taxonomy of fraud, illustrated with amazing stories of real-life frauds.
Per Davies: “A long firm makes you question whether you can trust anyone. A counterfeit makes you question the evidence of your eyes. A control fraud makes you question your trust in the institutions of society and a market crime makes you question society itself.”
Davies’ key trick to spotting a fraud: look at something that’s growing unusually quickly, and examine it in some way it hasn’t been examined before.
Only the second chapter is about cryptocurrency specifically, but understanding how frauds think is fabulously useful in understanding how crypto works. Not even crypto’s frauds are new.
Davies used different stories in the UK and US editions of the book – so get both.
Financial crime seems horribly complicated but there are only so many ways you can con someone out of what's theirs. In fact, there are four. A veteran regulatory economist and market analyst, Dan Davies has years of experience picking the bones out of some of the most famous frauds of the modern age. Now he reveals the big picture that emerges from their labyrinths of deceit.
Along the way you'll find out how to fake a gold mine with a wedding ring, a file and a shotgun. You'll see how close Charles Ponzi, the king of pyramid schemes, came to…
I’ve been into spy stories for many years. I love the intrigue, the deception, the secrecy of that world. Of course, real spying may involve lots of periods of doing nothing, possibly followed by manic, dangerous action. All while dealing with the anxiety of hiding the fact that you might be a traitor to your country or simply not the person the world thinks you are. It’s a fascinating world, and that fascination is what draws me in.
I love the fact that Le Carre’s books are written by a man who was actually a member of MI6, if only for a short while. He takes real-world scenarios and writes a compelling story around them.
This book is about a Russian mafia moneyman who wants out and the interest that arises from British intelligence. Le Carre can be a slow-burner type of author, but he’s always compulsive, and this particular book was made into an excellent movie.
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Legacy of Spies.
In this exquisitely told novel, John le Carré shows us once again his acute understanding of the world we live in and where power really lies.
In the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and with Britain on the brink of economic ruin, a young English couple takes a vacation in Antigua. There they meet Dima, a Russian who styles himself the world’s Number One money-launderer and who wants, among other things, a game of tennis. Back in London, the couple is subjected to an interrogation by…
I’m a huge thriller fan, and I love finance. In fact, I worked in the industry for over twenty years. I have an MBA from Duke and have been the CEO of three different SEC/FINRA-registered broker-dealers. Unfortunately, I’ve found myself deep into a thriller with a financial component that turns out to be implausible, overly simplistic, or both. It breaks the narrative for me. With these books, that’s not a concern. Financial thriller aficionados unite!
As a finance guy, I had always heard of the BIS or Bank for International Settlements, but I had no idea what it did, how it worked, or its history.
Adam LeBor expertly explains in the Tower of Basel not only what and who the BIS is, but how they have manipulated and influenced the global economy for generations. Despite the bank's strong connections to the Third Reich during the 1930s, the BIS continues to dominate global finance today as the central bank for central banks.
Every two months, leaders from the most powerful central banks in the world including the Federal Reserve meet in Basil to chart a course for the world economy under a cloak of secrecy. Tower of Basel rips the veil from this clandestine organization and exposes dark forces few are aware of.
Tower of Basel is the first investigative history of the world's most secretive global financial institution. Based on extensive archival research in Switzerland, Britain, and the United States, and in-depth interviews with key decision-makers,including Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England and former senior Bank for International Settlements managers and officials,Tower of Basel tells the inside story of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): the central bankers' own bank.Created by the governors of the Bank of England and the Reichsbank in 1930, and protected by an international treaty,…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I have been writing for many years, and my main preference is writing political thrillers with criminal overtones inspired by everyday media headlines that expose worldwide government security leaks and corruption. I spent fifteen years in Washington State looking at a questionable political system. With a further eight years living in Cyprus, I studied the existing political divide of the population before meeting a successful whistle-blower, a banker, who went public about the fraudulent activity orchestrated by Russia to steal billions from a Latvian bank. My book mirrors his success wrapped up in fiction.
I love this thriller based on real events several years ago when a whistleblower, later to become my friend, exposed a plot by Russian mafia and KGB elements to defraud a Latvian bank of billions of dollars. When the book was published, I expected an expose type of book but what surprised me was the facts from the real case were intertwined with a story that had me turning page after page.
John Christmas is a banker and what I found fascinating was the way his knowledge of the financial world is explained for the reader to understand. Moving from one country to another with characters involved in dangerous situations, this book is an excellent read for thriller connoisseurs.
A return trip to the land of his ancestors is about to turn deadly for one whistleblowing Chicago banker.
When financial executive Bob Vanags takes a job at ominous Turaida Bank in Latvia, he hopes to learn of his heritage and to fight economic fraud in Eastern Europe. Instead, Bob finds himself pulled into a world of political intrigue, blackmail, and murder.
Aided by his son David, his beautiful colleague Agnese, and a fearless Latvian journalist named Santa Ezeriņa, Bob begins to unravel his employer’s darkest secrets, discovering their sins and conspiracies beyond his wildest fears. Secrets that Turaida wants…
By the late nineties, I had lost faith in the industry where I had made a living for twenty years. Deregulation on Wall St and in the City had left investment banking with a business model riddled with conflict of interest. The rewards spiralled out of control and the businesses became too complicated for the regulators to supervise. I have a doctorate in history and had been a top-ranked investment analyst in several sectors. I took an idea to Penguin and my first book, The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, was published in 2001. I've since written six more, and contributed regularly to the Financial Times and BBC.
Discrete, mysterious, and powerful, Wall St’s great financial institutions shaped corporate America in the 20th century and none more so than Lazard Freres. But towards the end of the century, as competitors scaled up, Lazard was distracted by a power struggle involving hard-charging Wall St bankers and an inscrutable French billionaire. Who really played the winning hand? This book reveals all!
A grand and revelatory portrait of Wall Street’s most storied investment bank
Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a year, make billions in fees, pay their executives in the tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood apart. Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were its weapons of choice. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started…
I first started studying traders while working at London Business School in the early 1990s. This was the start of a lifelong fascination with traders and the psychology of financial behavior. Why do traders talk so much about their emotions? Why does so much of what they do fit so poorly with how economists think markets work? How do financial firms fail to notice rogue traders and other massive risks? And recently, why do investment banks and police forces both seem so good at avoiding uncomfortable knowledge? These are all questions that have fascinated me and which I have been lucky to be paid to research and advise on.
This book is an amusing, honest, and insightful account of the ways technology has changed financial trading from someone who has lived through enormous changes in the ways financial markets and investment banks operate.
I love the way in which this very readable book raises big questions about the evolution of financial markets and trading whilst bringing the arguments to life with personal stories. It's a lot of fun to read, but along the way, you will learn a great deal about investment banks and the creative and sometimes destructive uses technological advances are put to in our rapidly changing world.
'Eloquent, entertaining and accessible.' FT Adviser
When Kevin Rodgers embarked on his career in finance, dealing rooms were filled with clamouring traders and gesticulating salesmen. Nearly three decades later, the bustle has gone and the loudest noise you're likely to hear is the gentle tapping of keyboards.
Why Aren't They Shouting? is one banker's chronicle of this silent revolution, taking us from an age of shouted phone calls and alpha males right up to today's world of computer geeks and complex derivatives. Along the way, Rodgers offers a masterclass in how modern banking actually works, exploring the seismic changes to…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’ve been fascinated by thrillers since I was first allowed to read them. My childhood bookcase was full of Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean, and every Nevil Shute novel. Later, these were joined by many others, not least John Le Carré. Banking gave me an insight into the murky world of money, bringing with it real-life stories as compelling as those I love reading about. My obsession with the genre is not only with elegant, complex plots but also with what motivates the characters to take the extraordinary risks they do in such challenging environments. The five thrillers I’ve chosen are my absolute favorites. I hope you enjoy them.
This novel has one of the most beautifully choreographed plots. I love the way the many players dance around the unfolding drama caused by secret plans to devalue the dollar. It is done with exquisite subtlety.
The devaluation plan's central story dovetails with several parallel plots: an investment adviser determined to piggyback on the scheme to increase his wealth and a Soviet finance official trying to undermine the US Dollar and save the USSR billions of dollars on overseas contracts. It gave me an insight into what real financial power is like.
"A brilliant novel on international finance ... you will have serious trouble putting this book down." — Forbes
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, this was the first thriller set in the world money market that was written by an actual financial expert. Paul Erdman's fast-paced, suspenseful story centers on a billion-dollar, top-secret coup intended to protect the U.S. dollar. In settings that range from Washington, D.C., to London, Paris, Moscow, and Beirut, a cast of memorable characters enact a plot that brings the world to the brink of the biggest financial explosion in history.
