In 1999 Harry Markopolos was a small-time number cruncher at a Boston firm; he was tasked with analyzing investment products. One day he was handed a prospectus outlining Bernie Madoff’s strategy and stellar results and asked to create a similar product. Very quickly he realized that such returns, consistent through good times and bad, peaks and valleys, were impossible under normal circumstances. Either Madoff had knowledge of the future or he was involved in some kind of a scam. The numbers do not and cannot lie.

Markopolos knew that Bernie Madoff was a fraud. He knew it in 1999, fully ten years before Madoff’s Ponzi scheme collapsed, evaporating some $40 billion. For years he tried to make the Securities and Exchange Commission aware of what he knew, but he was met only with resistance. The SEC turned him away time and again. And over the years, Madoff’s fraud grew by tens of billions. Finally, in the closing days of 2008 when Madoff’s empire collapsed, Markopolos was vindicated, finally able to say a well-earned, “I told you so!” No One Would Listen is the story of his long battle to expose Madoff.

The power of this book is not in exposing who Madoff was or what he was doing. That is all well known by now. Rather, the book’s force is in exposing the gross negligence and incompetence of the SEC and, further, in exposing the systemic greed that allowed Madoff to prosper for so long.

What may be most surprising and what may be the greatest statement about human nature is that most of Madoff’s clients, the big corporate ones at least, knew that he was a fraud. They knew that he was in some way gaming the system. Yet as long as he was doing so for their benefit, they were not going to complain. Most thought he was front-running; therefore, though he was cheating and would eventually be caught, their money would be returned to them and in the meantime they would enjoy great returns. None of them understood that he was running a Ponzi scheme which would return them nothing. So it was not just Madoff’s corruption and greed that cost investors billions; it was their own greed and lack of ethics. No one would listen because no one wanted to listen.

For years Markopolos lived in fear of Bernie Madoff, convinced that, because of his crusade against him, he was a marked man. He slept with a gun by his side and picked up a concealed weapon permit. He constantly thought back to his military training, figuring out how he would escape from a hail of bullets. He got into the habit of looking under his car for hidden bombs and spent a great deal of money upgrading his home alarm system. Yet beyond a single incident of a car tailing him for a short time he had no evidence that anyone was out to get him. He lived in a fear that seems to have been fueled primarily by his own imagination. And no sooner had Madoff fallen then Markopolos loaded up his shotgun, convinced that the SEC was now going to invade his home (do they have an accounting SWAT team?).

The whole book is tinged with this bizarre altered reality. Markopolos clearly has a lively imagination and an inflated sense of his own importance. Throughout the book he shows that he can do his own job well and that he is convinced that he can do everyone else’s job just as well–certainly better than they can do it themselves. Time and again he offers not just facts, but opinion and judgment. Read through some of his submissions to the SEC and you can see why they were ignored–they are full of self-importance, demands for bounties and snide comments about how the SEC needs to do its job better. Though we cannot excuse their negligence, we can hardly fault them for regarding Markopolos with some suspicion.

To call No One Would Listen a thriller, as the subtitle does, is quite a stretch. Yes, the book is interesting enough, but it is only a thriller in Markopolos’ own imagination (or in the creative mind of a marketer). It’s actually rather a plodding tale that goes into great detail about financial transactions that are well outside the experience of most of us. Wall Street jargon pervades its pages. The value of the book, at least in my mind, is not in the tale of one man crusading against a massive fraud. Rather, it is the harsh reality that Madoff thrived only because so many of his biggest customers wanted him to. His scheme would never have grown so large without these corporate customers. They knew, or at least suspected, that he was corrupt, but as long as his corruption fed their bank accounts, they were willing to overlook it. It was only when his corruption caused their accounts to evaporate that they grew incensed. They eventually paid the price for their greed.

Verdict: Read it to see a clear example of the hard cost of greed.

Along with On the Brink and Too Big to Fail, The Quants is the third book on the list of bestsellers this year that has attempted to make sense of the recent economic downturn. I suspect it will not be the last. On the Brink told the story from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s perspective while Too Big To Fail looked at it through a wide lens. Scott Patterson’s The Quants takes a different approach altogether, looking at the role played by the quants–the quantitative analysts.

When you read of hedge funds, ATQs, statistical arbitrage, credit default swaps and so many of the other terms that have very suddenly found their way into common parlance, you are speaking of the work of quants. Quantitative analysts are mathematicians or physicists or people from related disciplines who have found a role to play in the world of economics. The Times says, “Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money.” Seeing the world markets as akin to the universe, a mystery to be solved, they set out to construct impossibly complex formulas and algorithms that can turn money into more money.

Yes, they can turn money into more money. But they can also turn credit into money and risk into money and pretty much everything else into money. The problem is that much of the wealth they were able to produce at the end of this process was created by borrowing billions and by increasing leverage to dangerous levels. Much of it was a very elaborate kind of fiction, a giant bubble just waiting to be deflated. Though many quants were convinced that the formulas were foolproof and that the flow of money could never dry up, the events of 2007 and 2008 proved them wrong. Suddenly the truth they thought they knew was reversed and recklessly-constructed edifices came crashing down. Hundreds of billions of dollars evaporated overnight and very nearly took world economies with them. And I am left asking, if money can vanish into thin air, did it really and truly exist in the first place? What exactly was it that these people were creating?

In this book the author writes often of the ultimate quest of the quants. The quants, more than anything else, want to discover the Truth. Truth, in their lexicon, describes the mathematical knowledge that would once and for all settle how the markets work. They want to solve the markets just as they’ve solved the Rubic’s Cube or the game of Blackjack. They pursue this Truth with abandon at times, pursuing it as one might devote oneself to a deity or, worse, a functional deity such as an addiction. Their Truth is their god.

It seems to me that at the heart of the work of the quants is the age-old combination of obsession and greed. In their world, making money is not a means to an end, but is an end in and of itself. They do not create anything beyond money and offer nothing beyond the fabrication of wealth. They are, essentially, gamblers. And throughout this book Patterson shows how many of these men turned first to gambling and only later to the ultimate poker game of Wall Street. Many of these quants are notorious gamblers still, finding the old thrill at the tables or at the trading desk.

As much as Too Big to Fail or On the Brink, The Quants shows just how close we were to a complete economic meltdown. And more than those other books, it shows how greed–unbridled greed combined with a worldview that treats life as if it is a kind of game–was at the heart of so much of it. A small handful of utterly brilliant individuals proved themselves hopelessly, utterly foolish. They gambled with their own money, they gambled with other people’s money, and they gambled with the world economy. In the end, only providence saved us from an epic disaster.

In The Quants Patterson neatly combines the biographical with the economic, tying together the stories of the quants themselves with the work they did and the economic turmoil they caused. It combines into an intriguing combination that makes the book a joy to read. Though the subject matter can at times be difficult and obscure, Patterson makes it accessible and enjoyable. I highly recommend this one.

Verdict: Read it if you are even the least bit intrigued by the subject matter.

You had to know that the ongoing economic downturn was going to generate more than its fair share of books. For years to come the events and all that led to them will be studied and analyzed, looking for patterns, looking for answers. And already we are beginning to see a steady stream of books seeking to make their mark. Too Big to Fail sought to be a definitive account, but was clearly too quick to store shelves to be that. More relevant to the long-term historical record is On the Brink, the account of Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury from 2006 through to the time that President Obama moved into the White House.

Is this book business? Politics? Memoir? I hardly even know how to categorize it. Those categories all overlap as Paulson weaves together this account of the crisis as he saw it and, in his unique position, sought to overcome it.

On the Brink is less about what caused the downturn and more about what Paulson and others did to help America get through it and, in time (hopefully), recover from it. These decisions are often exhaustively detailed in day-by-day and moment-by-moment fashion. Paulson kept meticulous records of what he did, who he called and who he interacted with and here he shares those records with the world. Whether talking to his wife about their Christian Science faith or talking to politicians from nations on the other side of the world, he seeks to let the reader into his life.

This is not fast-paced reading; in fact, for most people it may well prove exhausting. Paulson does not expend a lot of effort in explaining the background of the crisis or in adapting the lexicon of his business world. Many terms will pass over the head of the average reader, I am sure (this was certainly the case with me and would have been more notable still had I not already read several books on the topic).

Yet, despite the plodding pace, it is interesting to hear Paulson’s defense of the decisions he and others had to make. It is easy for the armchair quarterbacks among us to announce what they would have done in his place, but as Paulson provides a glimpse at the decisions he was facing and the political realities he had to deal with, the black and white does turn to varying shades of gray. Though you may still rue the decisions he made, at the very least I believe you will have greater respect for the man and the grueling choices he faced.

Verdict: Read it if you just need to know what happened and why.

Looking back at the books that made their way onto the New York Times list of bestsellers in January, I was rather surprised to see that only one of them could rightly be termed a business book. Daniel Pink’s Drive, which is jointly filed under Business and Self-Help, concerns itself with “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.”

“This is a book about motivation,” he says. “I will show that much of what we believe about the subject just isn’t so… The problem is that most businesses haven’t caught up to this new understanding of what motivates us. Too many organizations—not just companies, but governments and nonprofits as well—still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science.” This is an interesting premise, isn’t it? What if the way we try to motivate people, say through using financial bonuses in the workplace, is not only ultimately ineffective but also downright de-motivating? What if we have gotten this all very wrong? That would be bad news, I guess. “The good news is that the solution stands before us—in the work of a band of behavioral scientists who have carried on the pioneering efforts of Harlow and Deci and whose quiet work over the last half-century offers us a more dynamic view of human motivation. For too long, there’s been a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. The goal of this book is to repair that breach.”

Reading through a Christian lens, I saw that Pink immediately got off to a bad start by setting “carrot and stick” motivation within an evolutionary lens. That is to say that motivation that depends on bonuses for good behavior and punishment for poor behavior is rooted in evolutionary behavior. As one who puts no stock in that kind of evolution, I am left looking for another explanation for what appears to be deep-rooted human behavior.

Pink distinguishes between three types of motivation that he calls Motivation 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Motivation 1.0 is instinctual, animal motivation or, in his worldview, the motivation of our simian ancestors. Motivation 2.0 says that the way to improve performance, to increase productivity, or encourage excellence is to reward the good and punish the bad. This is the motivation we most often see in the classroom and boardroom, but, he suggests, a kind of motivation that harms as much as it helps. This is especially true in creative work where it dulls rather than sharpens.

Pink proposes a new kind of motivation. Motivation 3.0 is a kind of internal motivation that arises at the confluence of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. These three terms play an important role in Drive. Autonomy is a natural human urge to direct our own lives; mastery is that desire to improve in our ability to do something that really matters; purpose is our desire to connect to something bigger than ourselves. Says Pink, “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.”

At this point Pink introduces two kinds of behavior: Type X and Type I. Type X behavior is fueled by extrinsic rewards (“X” is for extrinsic, don’t you see?). Where we are mostly accustomed to Type X behavior, he pushes toward Type I which depends upon intrinsic rewards. Rather than being motivated only be extrinsic rewards such as year-end bonuses, we are motivated by the joy we take in what we do. Type I behavior depends upon these same three factors: autonomy, mastery and purpose. “Today economic accomplishment, not to mention personal fulfillment … depends not on keeping our nature submerged but on allowing it to surface. It requires resisting the temptation to control people—and instead doing everything we can to reawaken their deep-seated sense of autonomy. This innate capacity for self-direction is at the heart of Motivation 3.0 and Type I behavior.” Having introduced and defended Motivation 3.0, Pink provides a long list of resources for introducing it within organizations. He writes, for example, of one of today’s buzzwords: Results Only Work Environments, in which there are no set hours or locations; just get the work done and everyone’s happy. Maybe there is real benefit in rethinking how we work, even going so far as to rethink the Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 kind of workday.

I enjoyed reading Drive and found that it offered a multitude of interesting observations about human nature. Though the carrot and stick mentality seems to be deeply embedded in humans, either innately or perhaps culturally, I can see that a new kind of motivator may well suit us. Speaking personally, I know that I have found far more joy in situations where I’ve been self-directed and where I’ve found autonomy, mastery and purpose. Certainly those experiences have been far more beneficial than ones where I’ve been micro-managed and disenfranchised. And wouldn’t this make good sense from a theological perspective? God may resort to carrot and stick motivation when necessary (think of the Old Testament covenantal language in which God lays out a promise and obligation and the punishment due to those who violate the terms) but doesn’t God desire that we obey him freely and from the overflow of joy within? Doesn’t he desire that we worship and honor him out of delight rather than duty? That intrinsic motivation is so much more powerful, so much more fulfilling.

Drive is one of those books where I’d love to have a Christian “interpret” it. What I mean is that I’d love to hear a Christian who is knowledgeable about these kinds of business principles look at it through a Christian lens (I’m looking at you, Matt Perman). Many of the principles of the book will no doubt need to be discarded but many others will undoubtedly prove transferable by a mind far greater than mine.

As he brings the book to a close Pink writes, “A central idea of this book has been the mismatch between what science knows and what business does. The gap is wide. Its existence is alarming. And though closing it seems daunting, we have reasons to be optimistic.” Of course if there is a gap between science and business, the gap between theology and business must be greater still. I couldn’t help but think that in this book Pink unearths some truths about humans that are as much theological as they are scientific. Those principles, brought into a business, will surely have to change the way the business is run. And if business, why not ministry and classroom and the rest of life?

Verdict: Read it if you want to rethink how you are motivated and how to motivate others.