Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager by n+1, Keith Gessen & Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, Harper Perennial, 260 pages, $14.99, Paperback, June 2010, ISBN 9780061965302

Keith Gessen is the founder of n+1, a mostly literary magazine out of New York City, and the author of All the Sad Young Literary Men, which, as you can probably gather from the title, is also thoroughly literary. So, how is it that he has now penned one of the most fascinating books to date on the recent calamity on Wall Street?

It began as concern for a friend who had borrowed against his home in a time of financial trouble. To figure out how deflating home prices were going to affect this friend, he did an interview for n+1 with an anonymous hedge fund manager he calls HFM. That interview turned into a series of interviews spanning two years, “from the first rumblings of the crisis in the fall of 2007 to the late summer of 2009….” The timing was serendipitous.

As the subprime crisis quickly spirals into a wide array of other crises, you’re given an intimate account of it all through the lens of someone watching from the twentieth floor. It is by turns tragic, introspective and wildly funny. It is always very intelligent and, above all, touchingly human. At the end of Chapter 2, “The Death of Bear,” we find HFM reacting to the quickly worsening situation with a bit of gallows humor.

n+1: So you look out here onto midtown on the twentieth floor. This is all going to be okay?

HFM: That guy there will lose his job. White shirt, futzing about—he’ll lose his job. He’s putting. There’s going to be no room for people like that, the bar is higher. You can’t play golf in your office during a crisis.

[…]

That guy’s done! Everyone else is okay.

There are books on the crisis whose breadth is seemingly larger—Too Big To Fail, The Big Short, The End of Wall Street. The story lines in those books are sweeping, the personalities larger than life. This book’s wealth is in its details, the book’s character anonymous but close and personable. When reading Diary of a Very Bad Year, the details gather into a more intimate experience of that wider picture and its sobering implications.

Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business by Nancy Lublin, Portfolio, 246 pages, $25.95 Hardcover, June 2010, ISBN 9781591843146

On the surface, Nancy Lublin’s book seems to be about non-profits, but as you get a few pages in, it becomes apparent that Lublin uses her experience as a non-profit CEO to inspire for-profits to think about business differently. Non-profits have no budgets and small staffs made up primarily of volunteers, yet they often attain high productivity and impact. Corporations have budgets and large, well-paid staffs, yet often find themselves in gridlock. What can the two learn from each other?

Lublin encourages both to tap the power of zero in business. Doing more with less is becoming a business mantra these days, and Zilch is a guidebook on some of the best practices. From developing quality in products and people, to building a better brand, to finding purpose, to collaborating externally, Lublin explains the myriad ways companies can accomplish big things without spending.

A simple example that struck me was the brief section on saying, “Thank You,” to employees. It’s simple, and it’s free, Lublin says. And yet, such a small gesture can go a long way toward inspiring employees to be part of the team, put more creativity and skill into projects, and stay committed. Similarly, on the customer side, Lublin encourages companies to “See people first, buyers second.” Making people (internal and external) feel that they are a part of something bigger can make them commit, both financially and as followers. Working on creative ways to build that perception can be done through a series of words, actions, and work—and not necessarily by spending.

Through grassroots marketing efforts and applied philosophy, doing more with less is not just a theory. It is something people like Lublin live successfully by. The important lesson of this book is that all business should have an impact while reducing spending—and Zilch shows us how.

The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane by Randall Lanes, Portfolio, 353 Pages, $27.95, Hardcover, July 2010, ISBN 9781591843290

Every decade seems to have a nickname: The Roaring Twenties and The Swinging Sixties, for example. Randall Lane makes a strong case for the past decade to be christened The Zeroes. In his new memoir of the same name, Lane—cofounder and editor of Trader Monthly and Dealmaker magazines—tells the story of his own experiences during that decade of financial excess that we all are now paying for.

Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin is still the definitive book about the actual banking crisis that changed our world so radically. The Zeroes offers more of a People magazine (or possibly TMZ) look at how we got here. And that is not an insult. The entertainment rag aspect comes from the author’s willingness to name names and pull no punches when describing, with an insider’s eye, the excesses of the decade. The people gracing these pages include Sen. John McCain gambling at a craps table and ex-Major League Baseball player Lenny Dykstra behaving as an authority on the stock market.

As a magazine publisher—the traders loved the PR he could provide—Lane was smack dab in the middle of the lunacy. This unique view—a bit like Alice in Wonderland—is presented with the use of a self-deprecating humor that pervades the book and creates sympathy for a man misled by opportunity.

What Michael Lewis did for ‘80s traders in Liar’s Poker, Randall Lane has now done for trader rock stars of The Zeroes. You will be stunned by the craziness and cautioned by the consequences.