Book of the week: I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester

(Simon & Schuster, $25)

There’s no shortage of books on the 2008 financial crash, said Laura Miller in Salon.com. But this one, by British novelist John Lanchester, is different. Full of literary references and “down-to-earth metaphors,” I.O.U. provides an “admirably concise” critique of the absurdities of international finance. Reveling in the role of outsider, the author produces the only account of the financial meltdown “likely to make you snort with laughter on the crosstown bus.” Lanchester’s purpose is to answer the question of “who done it,” said Edward Chancellor in The Wall Street Journal. In the process, he bitingly arraigns a cast of culprits: bankers, regulators, credit agencies, and academics, who all suffered a “collective bout of wishful thinking.” But Lanchester doesn’t let the rest of us off the hook—the now-“vengeful” public was at the time all too willing to believe. “After all, but for the madness of crowds, there would be no manias.”

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