One man's pain is another man's pleasure. It will be no comfort to beat-en-up bankers that their plight has spawned a mini-boom in publishing. The Economist counts at least 18 books on the crisis that are either in the works or already in the shops. With publishers still sniffing out possible authors and agents hawking proposals from grizzled hacks, expect at least another dozen to join them.rnThose already published range from the populist ("Plunder" by Danny Schech-ter) to the highbrow ("The Subprime Solution" by Robert Shiller, of home-price-index fame). The publisher of "Plunder", Alexander Dake, admits that the book was "kind of a rush job"-though, he insists, impeccably researched. Others have benefited from good fortune: Charles Ellis's "The Partnership", a weighty history of Goldman Sachs, appeared just as the investment bank took centre-stage. A history of finance by Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor, was also well timed (see page 120).
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