Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future
Robert B. Reich
Knopf, $28.95

A new reading of the economic crisis – and a plan for dealing with the challenge of its aftermath. When the nation’s economy floundered in 2008, blame was directed almost universally at Wall Street. But Robert B. Reich suggests a different reason for the meltdown, and for a perilous road ahead. He argues that the real problem is structural: it lies in the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top, and in a middle class that has had to go deeply into debt to maintain a decent standard of living. Reich reveals how precarious our situation still is. Reich’s assessment of what must be done to reverse course and ensure that prosperity is widely shared represents the path to a necessary and long-overdue transformation.

The Little Book of Economics: How the Economy Works in the Real World
Greg Ip
Wiley, $23.95

One side effect of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression is that it has ignited a fresh desire among citizens and investors to better understand the economy. The Little Book of Economics is an accessible, engaging, and entertaining guide to all of the wonderful and wicked ways in which the economy functions and what it all means to you.

Trader’s Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives, Revised Edition
Satyajit Das
Prentice-Hall, $29.99

Traders, Guns & Money is a wry and wickedly comic exposé of the culture, games, and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world, usually with other people’s money. Whether you move in the financial world yourself, know people who do, or have money invested in stocks, shares or derivatives, this is a fascinating read guaranteed to make you think.

Don’t Count On It! Reflections on Investment Illusions, Capitalism, “Mutual” Funds, Indexing, Entrepreneurship, Idealism and Heroes
John C. Bogle
Wiley, $35.95

Don’t Count on It! presents an anthology of Bogle’s latest thinking, focused on how numbers deceive us into seeing things as other than they really are. He also presents a cogent analysis of the chinks in the armour of a financial system that has failed to live up to the responsibility owed to its individual and institutional investors.

Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World’s Population and How It Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation
Ted C. Fishman
Scribner, $32.50

The New York Times bestselling author of China, Inc. reports on the astounding economic and political ramifications of an aging world. The world’s population is rapidly aging—by the year 2030, one billion people will be sixty-five or older. As the ratio of the old to the young grows ever larger, global aging has gone critical: For the first time in history, the number of people over age fifty will be greater than those under age seventeen. Few of us understand the resulting massive effects on economies, jobs, and families.

Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads
Srikant M. Datar, David A. Garvin and Patrick G. Cullen
Harvard Business Press, $39.95

In this new book, the authors document a rising chorus of concerns about business schools gleaned from extensive interviews with deans and executives, and from a detailed analysis of current curricula and emerging trends in graduate business education. They provide case studies showing how leading MBA programs have begun reinventing themselves for the better, and offer concrete ideas for how business schools can surmount the challenges that come with reinvention, including securing faculty with new skills and experimenting with new pedagogies. Rethinking the MBA reveals why and how business schools must define a better pathway for the future.