"The Lords of Finance," a book about the four most powerful investment bankers and how they responded to changing economic conditions in the 1920s and 1930s, shouldn't be half as engaging as it is. Ahamed does an excellent job of bringing the Great Depression and the inevitable failure of the gold standard to life by bringing the people responsible to life. Instead of being treated as distant ciphers, the central bankers of the US, UK, France and Germany are treated as human beings — people with friendships, beliefs, romantic relationships, and, alas, horribly misguided beliefs on how monetary policy should function and who it should serve.

Over a decade after it's publication, this book remains an approachable and engaging overview of the all top human decisions that ultimately led to the worst economic cataclysm in modern human history.