"The End of Wall Street", by Roger Lowenstein (2010)

This is (hopefully) the last book about the recent GFC that I'll read for a while! Thankfully, I saved the best for last: Lowenstein has written what will probably come to be considered the definitive book on the subject so far. True, it isn't as action-packed and detailed as the 24-esque "Too Big To Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin, or as quirky and character-driven as "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. But it is written from the viewpoint of someone who siezes the big picture and is able to place the entire debacle in an appropriate historical setting.

Bottom Line: if you're going to read just one book on the GFC, I heartily recommend this one.

P.S. The following vignette (from the final chapter) gives a feel for the kind of excess that is, and probably always will be, endemic to Wall St:

Well into the crisis period, when banks such as Citigroup were operating on federal investment and when Citi's stock was in single digits, Vikram Pandit, the CEO, was observed with a lunch guest at Le Bernardin, the top-rated restaurant in New York. Pandit looked discerningly at the wine list, saw nothing by the glass that appealed and ordered a $350 bottle so that, as he explained, he could savor "a glass of wine worth drinking." Pandit drank just one glass; his friend had none. The rest was presumably poured down a gilded drain.