Even though Enron as a company no longer exists, there are certain lessons and anecdotes in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room that everyone should see. The epitome of greed, the courage to stand against it, and the cheesy-yet-true revelation that you can never judge a book, or a major corporation, by its cover.

Charles Gasparino’s “The Sellout” analyzes the root causes of the 2008 financial crisis. The book explores how government policies that encouraged homeownership, along with Wall Street greed, led the country into economic despair.

Is there a sound monetary system that assures the end of inflation and, with it, of the business cycle? Murray Rothbard thinks such a monetary system is possible in his book, “Case for the 100 Percent Gold Dollar.”

Why have some economies progressed and grown while others have remained in agricultural backwaters? William Bernstein presents a historical framework to explain global economic inequality in his 2004 book.

Economic theories can’t explain economic events in history, say George Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller in their 2009 book, because they don’t take into account that humans are involved. Or, more specifically, humans and their “animal spirits.”

We love to hop on planes, trick out our SUVs and build McMansions in the suburbs. At $20 per gallon, these cheap oil luxuries will be gone along with today’s “bigger is better” American dream.

If you’re looking to learn what exactly futures are and how different types work, you probably would be better off reading a more academic book. But if you’re curious about the stories behind futures trading, The Futures could be the right one for you.

The free market ideals of Milton Friedman may have fallen from grace for some during this economic downturn, but his words are more important now than ever.

John Bogle’s The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism is a thorough rebuke of corporate America’s greed-stricken downfall during what he calls the “Great Bull Market” of 1997 to 2000.

The Big Short is unique because rather than taking us inside the heads of the crooked Wall Street bankers, it illuminates the recent crisis through the minds of a very small minority of traders and investors who were on the other side – those who realized something was seriously wrong with the financial system before anyone else did.