The author of “The End of History” says the financial crisis revealed a great deal about the nature of America’s political and economic system. The shame, he says, is that opportunities to change it are now being ignored.

Harvard macroeconomist Robert Barro takes issue with some common assumptions about the Great Depression, and how America got out of it.

Yale professor Gary Gorton says today’s financial crisis may feel like a unique event, but in the US and in the UK crises are historically common. And we have a history of similar responses.

The 2007 Nobel Economics Prize winner says that, contrary to popular perception, economic theory did a good job of predicting the financial crisis, it’s just that no one was paying any attention. Eric Maskin talks us through four journal articles and one book on ‘economic theory and the financial crisis.’

With hindsight, was the euro a good idea? Will it come through the present crisis intact or will any country decide to leave? And what happens if they do? Economist Barry Eichengreen recommends the best books on the euro.

Wall Street money manager Barry Ritholtz diagnoses the ills of America’s political and economic system in a fizzing, irreverent analysis (with promised f-bombs thrown in). He recommends the best books on the causes of the financial crisis.

The former chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers says we’ve learned that terrible downturns can still occur, but also that the right policy response can make a huge difference to the outcome

We all have a bit of the rogue trader in us. So says the chief business commentator of the FT, who tells us about the greed, vanity and weakness that can lead to financial disaster. He picks the best books on financial speculation.

Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky recommends the best books about one of the most important economists of all time, John Maynard Keynes.

Understanding finance is key to understanding how the world works, but many people  know very little about it. Journalist John Lanchester picks five accessible books to bring the layperson up to speed.

The former banker and author of 12 books on economics says that over the last 30 years economics has been colonising every science. “Even something like education all comes down to incentives”

We need to build an entirely new market system, not just patch up the old one, says economics commentator Anatole Kaletsky. He picks the best books to help us think about what form a new capitalism might take.