Bloomberg columnist Mark Gilbert shows how Wall Street's tolerance for extremes made the global credit crunch both foreseeable and inevitable. He offers a blow-by-blow account of what went wrong and what lessons need to be learned from the crisis.

• Gilbert's argument—that everyone with skin in the money game had a vested interest in pretending that nothing could go awry—is a well-defended, compelling indictment of the financial community.
• Gilbert is able to make complex financial events easy to understand.
• His outlook is truly global: this financial crisis respects no geographical boundaries, and Gilbert draws on anecdotes and examples from around the world to make his case.