Revelatory, engrossing, penetrating ... Cohan revels in a good bust-up

The best analysis yet of Goldman's increasingly tangled web of conflicts

Startling ... lifts the lid on Goldman's pivotal role in the meltdown

Cohan portrays a firm that has grown so large and hungry that it's no longer long-term greedy but short-term vicious. And that's the wonder - and horror - of Goldman Sachs

Cohan's book tells of bitter power struggles and business cock-ups

A definitive account of the most profitable and influential investment bank of the modern era

The conviction that the market will take care of everything went unchallenged until this summer - by the seemingly unlikely combination of two economics editors from the Guardian and the Mail on Sunday

In tragic-comic detail, they show how debacles like Northern Rock and banks lending non-existent money to customers has led to disaster for millions of ordinary people, one perpetrated by an unaccountable financial elite whom they dub The New Olympians

A riveting and frankly alarming account of the state of the economy... I doubt I will read a more important book this year

I don't think I have ever needed a book more than I needed this book.

You will not be able to put this book down.

I inhaled it in one sitting. It made my shoulders drop three inches by the time I'd read the first chapter. Why? It is a permission slip to escape 'the achievement trap'.

Incredibly vivid

I've read lots of books about economics this last year. This is one of the very best... Superb

A fluent and indirect paean to Keynesian economics... this resonates with the contemporary turmoil in global financial markets

Ahamed unravels the story of the most terrible financial collapse in history from the perspective of the four men who were largely responsible: the leading central bankers in the United States, Britain, France and Germany

[a] very readable portrait of the bankers who allowed the Great Depression to happen

Possibly the most important political book that I have read since The Spirit Level

He has prised the lid off an important and terrifying can of worms

Lively and well written book

A welcome account of how the sun is never allowed to set on the British empire's old islands, whose fiscal pirates hoard the tax-free treasures of the rich

Shaxson delves into capitalism's secret nooks and tells us about how a culture of secrecy can perpetuate itself. Very interesting

A compelling read [...] an important and very much a live topic, it'll take you a few hours to read the book but it will be a worthwhile investment of time

What makes this such a good read for the layman is that the author employs all his journalistic skill (he used to work at Reuters) to illustrate his arguments and uses real examples to real examples to illustrate complex issues

This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the world we live in

This engrossing book about the offshore banking racket, with its eye-opening scrutiny of tax havens and the suited scoundrels who profit from them, will make you think again about the murkier side of the City...This first-rate forensic work ends with a plea that the closed City "must be abolished and submerged into a...fully democratic London"

[An] informed polemic against finance capital

Now more than a decade old, this is still the best introduction to the world of tax havens