Here are 100 books that Showdown at Gucci Gulch fans have personally recommended if you like
Showdown at Gucci Gulch.
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I’ve always been interested—a vast understatement to anyone who knows me—in what makes people tick. I’ve focused on analyzing business actors – bankers, lawyers, investors, executives, shareholders, and others. What do they want? Some combination of money, power, or prestige? How does loving to win fit in? How about hating to lose? When is enough (money/power/prestige) enough? What do they think is ok to do to get what they want? What do they think is not ok? Amazingly, as a law professor, I can pursue that interest as part of my job, and – I think and hope – do so in a way that might help lawmakers, regulators, and policymakers do better.
As everyone knows at this point, anything Michael Lewis writes will be enormous fun to read, while being about something really important—something he’ll make you care about even if you didn’t when you started the book.
In this case, the subject is people who bet on the direction of mortgages (and thus, house prices), and how those who bet on a huge plunge were right. This book has an amazing cast of characters, all richly drawn: some are smart, some are not so smart; some are excellent schmoozers, some can barely tolerate human interaction; some care a lot about money, some care more about being right, especially if everyone else is wrong.
Each book I've recommended cries out to be made into a movie. This one actually was.
The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.
Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. Out of…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
When I was growing up, I saw family members and friends, who were otherwise smart people who could master other aspects of their lives, have difficulty with personal finance decisions and investing. When my dad was laid off during a recession, he had some retirement money distributed to him, and I got interested in investing as he researched and tried with difficulty to handle this money himself. In my young adult years, I was a sponge to learn as much as I could about personal finance.
I first read this book as required reading for a college course, and it greatly changed how I thought about investing.
Over the years, I’ve read updated editions, and it never gets stale and always includes new information and insights. But the foundational issues have stood the test of time and remain in the newest edition.
I also love this book because it introduced me at a young age to mutual funds and Vanguard.
Today's stock market is not for the faint hearted. At a time of frightening volatility, the answer is to turn to Burton G. Malkiel's advice in his reassuring, authoritative, gimmick-free and perennially best-selling guide to investing. Long established as the first book to purchase before starting a portfolio, A Random Walk Down Wall Street now features new material on "tax-loss harvesting"; the current bitcoin bubble and automated investment advisers; as well as a brand-new chapter on factor investing and risk parity. And as always, Malkiel's core insights-on stocks and bonds, as well as investment trusts, home ownership and tangible assets…
I grew up in rural northern Michigan. My family lived in comfort, never lacking essentials. Yet, many of those living around me had difficulty making ends meet. Many lacked health insurance and year-round jobs. As a child, I viewed my community as normal and typical of the American experience. In many ways, it was–in part, that is the point of this list. At the time, I didn’t know that we could do better for those around me who worked so hard daily. Now I do. I selected these books to highlight the vast disparities between those with and without the comfort and luxury of good health.
Life expectancy among the working-class population in the United States was decreasing at an astounding rate well before the Covid-19 pandemic. While I was aware of growing inequality and decreasing access to health care for many, I didn’t realize how desperate the conditions of life seemed for many working-class Americans.
This book forced me to confront the uncomfortable reality of the health crisis among the many blue-collar workers living in the heartland of America.
A New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New Statesman Book to Read
From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class
Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row-a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
Michael Patrick Lynch is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Provost Professor of the Humanities at the University of Connecticut. His books have been translated into a dozen languages and include On Truth in Politics: Why Democracy Demands It, The Internet of Us, True to Life (Editor’s Choice, The New York Times Sunday Book Review), and Know-it-All Society (winner of the 2019 George Orwell Award). Lynch’s work has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nature, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and many other publications worldwide; his 2017 TED talk has been viewed nearly 2 million times. He lives in CT with his family and one very philosophical dog.
This book gave me a deeper appreciation of how moral intuitions shape political divisions—not as accidents of ideology but as features of human psychology. Haidt’s metaphor of the elephant and the rider helped me see why rational argument so often fails to persuade across political lines: because reason follows intuition, not the other way around.
His mapping of multiple “moral taste buds”—including authority, loyalty, and sanctity—also challenged the narrow moral frameworks that dominate secular discourse. While I don’t agree with everything—particularly his optimistic lean toward moral equilibrium or his underemphasis on structural power—I admire his effort to move us beyond outrage toward curiosity. It’s a valuable guide for understanding why we talk past one another—and how we might start listening instead.
'A landmark contribution to humanity's understanding of itself' The New York Times
Why can it sometimes feel as though half the population is living in a different moral universe? Why do ideas such as 'fairness' and 'freedom' mean such different things to different people? Why is it so hard to see things from another viewpoint? Why do we come to blows over politics and religion?
Jonathan Haidt reveals that we often find it hard to get along because our minds are hardwired to be moralistic, judgemental and self-righteous. He explores how morality evolved to enable us to form communities, and…
Why do some states appear to be so much more stable and secure than others. Why are some states so much more successful in providing public services such as health care, education, and infrastructure to their citizens than others. As an economic historian interested in the deeper roots of global inequalities in human welfare, the long-run development of states has always been one of the principal themes I have studied. In my view, the fiscal capacity of the state can be considered as the backbone of the state. Understanding the formation of fiscal states thus brings us closer to intricate puzzles of power, policies, and economic development.
This book sheds light on a very important yet greatly understudied theme: how modern tax systems spread across the globe.
Modern taxes refer to the broad-based tax instruments such as income taxes and general consumption taxes that underpin the rise of big government taxes.
The volume introduces a new historical dataset that maps the adoption of these modern taxes, covering both sovereign and colonial states from the 18th to the 21st century.
It shows how the logic of modern tax introductions in non-sovereign states differed from those in sovereign ones. In doing so, this volume goes beyond the methodological nationalism prevalent in fiscal sociology and comparative political economy.
Global Taxation investigates the global transition to modern taxation from the 18th century to today. Modern taxation refers to the broad-based tax instruments that allowed for the emergence of big government as we know it today, including, most prominently, income taxes and general consumption taxes. The volume draws on a new historical dataset of tax introduction worldwide to map the global spread of modern taxes descriptively and to explore its correlates analytically. It makes four contributions to the literature. First, it corrects a pervasive Western bias in historical political economy and fiscal sociology. Most of this literature focuses heavily on…
There are many big problems in the world today–racism, war, climate change, unaccountable governments, exploitative corporations, and so on. But when you scratch the surface of almost any serious problem, what you find is that the root of the problem is inequality: a minority of people are rich and powerful, while those who suffer the most are typically poor and powerless. I’m so passionate about inequality because, in my eyes, it constitutes the heart and soul of what’s wrong with our world and the key to making things better.
Although many people intuitively recognize that inequality is a serious problem, there is widespread doubt that anything can realistically be done about it. Saez and Zucman–perhaps the two most famous tax economists in the world–demolish this pessimism. In a clear, no-nonsense manner, they demonstrate that tax systems can easily fail but they can also be made to work.
The authors describe how rich people and corporations currently avoid tax, how tax havens function, and, most importantly of all, how an evidence-based tax system can be successfully built to prevent evasion and thereby meaningfully reduce inequality.
Even as they became fabulously wealthy, the rich have seen their taxes collapse to levels last seen in the 1920s. Meanwhile working-class Americans have been asked to pay more. The Triumph of Injustice is a forensic investigation into this dramatic transformation. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists who revolutionised the study of inequality, demonstrate how the super-rich pay a lower tax rate than everybody else. In crystalline prose they dissect the deliberate choices and the sins of indecision that have fuelled this trend: the gradual exemption of capital owners; the surge of a new tax-avoidance industry and, most critically, tax…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
My first computer was an early IBM PC back when all my friends had Commodores they used for gaming. Not being able to share their games meant I had to do something else, so I read the Introduction to Basic book that came in the box. I’ve been coding, reading about coding, writing about coding, teaching about coding, and talking about coding ever since. The world of technology moves so fast that it is hard to keep up. If you’ve taken one of my courses or listened to The Real Python Podcast, I hope you’ve heard about my passion for the topic.
Most of the code I write and use is open source. As a programmer, it is easy to think “open source means free.” I didn’t think much about it until one of the companies I worked at got acquired, and we had to audit our licenses.
The big company that bought us was very particular about which licenses were compatible with their needs. That was when I realized I needed to understand this stuff better. Rosen does a great job of teaching what is otherwise legalese in plain-spoken, easy-to-understand language. This book taught me why I choose the licenses I do rather than picking blindly.
"I have studied Rosen's book in detail and am impressed with its scope and content. I strongly recommend it to anybody interested in the current controversies surrounding open source licensing." -John Terpstra, Samba.org; cofounder, Samba-Team"Linux and open source software have forever altered the computing landscape. The important conversations no longer revolve around the technology but rather the business and legal issues. Rosen's book is must reading for anyone using or providing open source solutions." -Stuart Open Source Development LabsA Complete Guide to the Law of Open Source for Developers, Managers, and Lawyers
Now that open source software is blossoming around…
I grew up in the 1960s when the Supreme Court was widely praised in liberal circles for its path-breaking decisions protecting rights. Inspired by this vision of rights through law, I went to law school and then to graduate school, including a couple of years in England where I was confronted with skepticism about the role of courts. Are liberal beliefs about the role of the Supreme Court correct? Can courts really produce progressive social change, not just on paper, but in practice? Most of my research and scholarship addresses these questions that go to the heart of the belief that Supreme Court decisions protecting and furthering rights matter.
Lucas Powe’s magnificent study focuses on the relationship between the Supreme Court and elites throughout American history.
The Court, Powe argues, is not an independent institution dedicated to protecting the rights of the disadvantaged. Rather, it works in tandem with elites to further their interests. The book is beautifully written and persuasively argued.
'The Supreme Court follows the election returns', the fictional Mr. Dooley observed a hundred years ago. And for all our ideals and dreams of a disinterested judiciary, above the political fray, it seems Mr. Dooley was right. In this engaging - and disturbing - book, a leading historian of the Court reveals the close fit between its decisions and the nation's politics. The story begins with the creation of the Constitution and ends with the June 2008 decisions on the rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Rendering crisp (and often controversial) judgments on key decisions from Marbury v. Madison to…
I am a historian of education and twentieth-century U.S. history. Public schooling has been transformative for me, opening up a world of opportunities, but I know many others are not nearly so lucky. This has shaped my interest in the history of public schooling, including its promise of democracy and opportunity and the too-often reality of the way it replicates and deepens social and economic inequalities. I think history helps us understand our world, including to see the roots of inequality we live with today and to think about how we might build a more equitable system.
I love how this book shows us how we can’t understand the failures of recent education reforms to fix educational inequality without putting them into a longer and wider context, namely the history of school desegregation.
This book explores how the failure of courts and policymakers to go far enough in school desegregation—especially to challenge the city-suburban boundary as a primary axis of racial and socioeconomic inequality—has doomed all subsequent reforms, including school finance reform, school choice, and standards and accountability.
This book has shaped my thinking about educational reform and inequality today, especially the importance of boundaries and funding. It helps us look at our current education policy landscape with a much more critical eye and see some of the things that are missing from this discussion today.
How is it that half a century after Brown v. Board of Education--and in spite of increased funding for urban schools and programs like No Child Left Behind--educational opportunities for blacks and whites in America still remain so unequal? In Five Miles Away, A World Apart, James Ryan provides a sobering answer to this question by tracing the fortunes of two schools in Richmond, Virginia--one suburban, relatively affluent, and mostly white, and the other urban, relatively poor, and mostly black. Ryan shows how court rulings against desegregation in the 1970s laid the groundwork for the massive disparities between urban and…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
As a child, I was always drawn to stories told through both words and illustrations. Why should that have to end in adulthood? Spoiler: it doesn’t, because there are SO many incredible graphic memoirs and novels written with adult audiences in mind. As a graphic memoirist myself, I love to see how other artists explore the form. I share recommendations in this genre every month in my newsletter, Haley Wrote This.
I grew up as a competitive swimmer and struggled to put words to some of the feelings I had around being a female athlete, especially given how disconnected I felt from the history of women’s sports. This book hits both of those topics as the author shares her experience as a soccer player—to the point that I had to put down the book every once in a while and just sigh with relief.
Plus, the historical look at Title Nine was so informative and, quite frankly, shocking.
"[R]eaders will certainly want to linger on the beautiful depictions of birds, people and scenes from her life. She weaves in historical context in graceful and necessary ways."
A beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir chronicling how sports shaped one young girl’s life and changed women’s history forever.
Growing up playing on a top national soccer team in the 1980s, Kelcey Ervick and her teammates didn’t understand the change they represented. Title IX was enacted in 1972 with little fanfare, but to seismic effect; between then and now, girls’ participation in organized sports has…
