Financial Crisis

Essential resources for navigating the financial crisis

Heading our list of outstanding new reads about Wall Street is William Cohan's House of Cards. The author, a former investment banker and prizewinning author, chronicles the fall of Bear Stearns and the end of the Second Gilded Age on Wall Street. He at once makes archane concepts like "credit default swap" crystal clear, while bringing to life the outsized personalities that have caused one major corporation after another to topple.

• Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It by Dave Kansas
• More on Surviving the Crisis