This is now the fifth book I’ve read dealing with the financial crisis, understandably quite a popular theme on the New York Times list of bestsellers so far this year. Five books later I am seeing certain themes repeat themselves but I still can’t say that I really understand the heart of the crisis. The financial context that led to it is so deep, so complex, that I just can’t wrap my mind around it. And I suspect that most people are in the same boat I am. Very few of us have the knowledge and expertise to really put the pieces together.

In The Big Short Michael Lewis, best known for authoring The Blind Side and Moneyball, takes a look at the crisis from a slightly different perspective. He looks at it from the perspective of those who saw the crisis coming and who shorted the market, making themselves rich in the process. As he does in Moneyball and The Blind Side, he writes about people more than events. He tells the story of the coming crisis through men like Steve Eisman, who saw the derivatives market for what it was–a whole lot of fictitious wealth that at one time or another would have implode. Both outraged and greedy, he went all-in against it.

Lewis may not come down entirely against the derivatives market in The Big Short and yet he certainly does seem to offer criticism of those who caused billions and billions of dollars to evaporate into thin air. (If money can evaporate into thin air, did it really exist in the first place?) But in doing so he seems to forget that just a few years ago he was championing these very derivatives. In a 2007 article he wrote “None of them seemed to understand that when you create a derivative you don’t add to the sum total of risk in the financial world; you merely create a means for redistributing that risk. They have no evidence that financial risk is being redistributed in ways we should all worry about. They’re just …worried. But the most striking thing about the growing derivatives markets is the stability that has come with them.” Some stability. Not surprisingly, he does not mention that he himself was once enamored by the very means that brought about the crisis. Take that as just an interesting little historical footnote.

The men who are the protagonists in this story are people who are outrageously greedy. It was not good motives that drove their action. It was not concern for their fellow man or even the desire to earn a living. Rather, it was the desire to become outrageously wealthy by risking all they had. It is like the man who found buried treasure in a field so he sold all that he had to buy it. Except that in this case he wanted to profit off misfortune and off the near downfall of a whole economic system. There is no Michael Oher here to draw you in–instead there are just greedy and grouchy Wall Street goons who, though they had foresight, had little in the way of ethics.

But then again, maybe I am being unfair. These men did nothing illegal; they just made themselves rich by betting against a market that was already teetering on the edge of collapse. Isn’t greed at the very heart of so much of what transpires on Wall Street? And weren’t these men just the few who played the game most skillfully? Maybe we shouldn’t hold their success against them. They had the foresight to, essentially, take out hundreds and hundreds of life insurance policies on companies that were already on life support and very nearly ready to flatline. That the economic system allowed them to do this just shows how bizarre and convoluted it had all become.

The Big Short is no The Blind Side. It may be an unfair comparison, I suppose, but somehow I was hoping for more interesting characters and, at the very least, more likable ones. That would have set this book apart from the many others that deal with roughly the same topic, albeit from a different perspective. As it is, there are better options out there if you want to figure out just what went wrong with America before and during the crisis. It’s not so much that there’s anything objectively wrong with The Big Short–it’s more that Lewis has written a book that has stiff and ultimately superior competition.

Verdict: Read it if you’d like a lighter take on the coming of the financial crisis

If you were one of the millions who has read Freakonomics you know what you are going to find in the sequel, Superfreakonomics. You will find a series of chapters that really have little to do with one another. Each of the five chapters stands on its own as a case study that somehow draws fascinating conclusions from seemingly irrelevant and disconnected data. It is the formula that worked so well in Freakonomics (which sold millions of copies) and there was really no reason to change it. Eventually the format may grow tired, but at least for two books it works very well.

The topics vary wildly between chapters and even within chapters. For example, the first chapter discusses prostitution, going so far as to look at in-depth studies on what prostitutes charge for their various services and how these rates differ from neighborhood-to-neighborhood within a particular city and how the rates differ for those who work for a pimp. While the subject matter may not sound so compelling, what the authors begin to do is show how pimps and real estate agents are alike, why prostitution is so much less prevalent today than it was in days past, and so on. What begins as a case study involving street prostitutes quickly draws conclusions about a wide variety of topics related to our culture. In examining the economics of prostitution we begin to see reflections of our culture; we begin to see how culture has changed in all sorts of different ways.

I was particularly glad to see that the final chapter is dedicated to global warming. Here the authors bring some reason to one of our society’s sacred cows. Without outright denying the impact of human beings on the (very!) gradual warming of the earth, they show how so many of the mind-breakingly-expensive solutions proposed by Al Gore and others like him would really do nothing but destroy the wealth of the wealthy nations. Any of these solutions are just the smallest drop in the bucket, destined to spend billions for no great effect. The authors show that there are far better solutions and ones that the earth has already used with great success. This chapter alone is worth the cost of the book and the time spent reading it. As if to prove what a sacred cow global warming is today, this chapter alone has turned multitudes of readers against the book (see the Amazon reviews as evidence).

And so it goes. Superfreakonomics is a faithful sequel in every way. It is not a book you would necessarily read to retain or one you would read to change your life. It is a book that can be read just for its entertainment value and there is nothing wrong with that. If you liked the first book, there is no reason you shouldn’t enjoy this one just as much. Do note, of course, that the first chapter, while tastefully done, does include some content that may not be appropriate for younger readers.

Verdict: Buy it

Love him or hate him, you probably have an opinion about Ron Paul. He’s a guy on the fringe, a guy who does not quite seem to fit into any camp but his own. And a time when the economy is undergoing a severe test, he is one of the few politicians who actually sounds like he knows what he is talking about when it comes to economics. Firmly rooted in the Austrian school of economics, Paul advocates pretty much the opposite of all America has done in the past few years: Where Washington has continually bailed out those corporations it deems too big to fail, he advocates allowing them to go bankrupt; where Washington remains firmly committed to fiat currency, he is eager to return to the gold standard; where Washington looks increasingly to socialize health care (and those companies that would fall apart but for federal aid) he has implicit confidence in the free market and its consequences; and where Washington continues to grant far-reaching power to the Fed, Paul advocates eliminating it altogether.

Few people understand macro-scale economics (heck, judging by the debt loads of most Americans I’d suggest that few people can wrap their minds around household economics) and fewer still understand the role of the Federal Reserve in economics and politics and the sometimes-fine line between them. Among the immensely important organizations in Washington, the Fed has one power that is unique: the ability to create money out of thin air. You do not need a graduate degree in economics to understand the magnitude, the potential ramifications, of this kind of power. When you consider that the Fed operates without any real congressional oversight, that it is protected from audits and that its leaders are appointed rather than elected, it becomes more shocking still. Ultimately, if you want to understand money in America, you need to understand the Fed. As Paul says, “It is irresponsible, ineffective, and ultimately useless to have a serious economic debate without considering fundamental issues about money and its quality, as well as the Fed’s massive role in manipulating money to our economic ruin.” Paul has spoken endlessly about the Fed for decades now and in this book he advocates his solution: get rid of it.

Paul minces few words. He says, “We need to take away the government’s money power. The banking industry needs its welfare check ended. The dollar’s soundness depends on its being untied from the machine that can make an infinite number of copies of dollars and reduce their value to zero.” Later he says, “The Federal Reserve System must be challenged. Ultimately, it needs to be eliminated. The government cannot and should not be entrusted with a monopoly on money. No single institution in society should have power this immense. In fact, I believe that freedom itself is at stake in this struggle.”

While clearly targeted at a general audience, End the Fed is stock full of “economese”–the lexicon of economics–and this may make for difficult reading for those not well-versed in such matters. I often found myself confused, reading back a few lines or pages and, on occasion, just giving up and moving on. In several areas Paul assumes just a little bit more knowledge than I’ve got. Inflation is a relatively simple concept to understand from a personal perspective, but when it comes to understanding its causes and effects on a national or international level, my head begins to spin. Nevertheless, I read on and largely enjoyed Paul’s arguments. He argues from three perspectives: the philosophical, the constitutional and the economic. In each case he makes a compelling case that the Fed is harming America far more than it is helping and that its very existence is contrary to the U.S. Constitution. Of course the book is inherently one-sided and one must assume that the Fed’s supporters can make arguments of their own as to why it can and should remain; they will undoubtedly also argue for increasing rather than decreasing its mandate. I must have Libertarian leanings (or perhaps just common sense leanings) because I tend to agree with Paul. There has to be a better way and one that is more consistent with American ideals. “The Federal Reserve should be abolished because it is immoral, unconstitutional, impractical, promotes bad economics, and undermines liberty. Its destructive nature makes it a tool of tyrannical government. Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve.” At least he does not leave us wondering what he really believes.

Created in time of crisis, it is ironic that the Fed is responsible for many of the nation’s subsequent economic crises, at least according to Paul. Constantly manipulating the markets, responsible for bubbles created and bubbles burst, and forever cranking out more real and virtual greenbacks, the Fed is at the center of American economics and politics. Its power is immense, its accountability near non-existent. Should not this, alone, call for abolition or, at the very least, radical modification?

Verdict: Wait for the Paperback