Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- With the subprime chill spreading and the dollar dropping like a ski jump, Ebenezer Scrooge won't be the only investor poring over his ledger this Christmas Eve.

So take pity on your anxious neighbor with a gift book that explains why credit dries up, bankers get ousted and the rich still manage to get richer.

You might start with the memoirs of Alan Greenspan, the man who was fiddling the financial knobs when the U.S. real-estate bubble began filling with helium.

In ``The Age of Turbulence'' (Penguin Press), the former Federal Reserve chairman rewrites his past and makes predictions for the future. The ``maestro'' is more measured, though, when it comes to describing how it felt to have the global financial system hanging on his Delphic comments about interest rates.

For a better sense of why markets surprise us, try ``The Black Swan'' by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Random House). Taleb argues that we are dangerously blind to the possibility of unlikely events such as 9/11. Like people in the Old World before Australia was discovered, we assume all swans are white because we've never seen a black one, he writes.

Once the unthinkable happens, it can blast a high-voltage shock through our tightly linked markets, as Richard Bookstaber explains in ``A Demon of Our Own Design'' (Wiley). A former Moore Capital Management Inc. risk manager, Bookstaber elucidates why markets keep getting riskier -- and how we might avoid meltdowns.

Panic of 1907

Another useful book on market contagion is ``The Panic of 1907'' by Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr (Wiley), a vivid account of how J. Pierpont Morgan Sr. struggled amid his rare books and tapestries to arrest a crisis as banks collapsed and depositors thronged tellers.

When titans of finance fall, the crash is heard around the globe, as several books this year showed. My favorite was ``The Last Tycoons'' by William D. Cohan (Doubleday).

If a 742-page history of an investment bank sounds dull, you haven't read this tour de force on Lazard Ltd. A former reporter who spent six years at Lazard, Cohan paints a panorama stretching from the firm's founding as a New Orleans dry-goods business in 1848 to the leadership struggle in the 1990s that paved the way for Bruce Wasserstein to grab control and take it public. This is a tale of mistresses, betrayal and Cuban cigars.

Another gripping account of turmoil inside an investment bank can be found in ``Blue Blood & Mutiny'' by Patricia Beard (William Morrow). Beard offers up a partisan account of how eight retired Morgan Stanley shareholders -- a.k.a. the Grumpy Old Men -- ousted Chief Executive Officer Philip Purcell.

Grasso, `Richistan'

And don't forget Richard Grasso, the fallen New York Stock Exchange boss who walked away with a $140 million retirement package. Charles Gasparino ably describes Grasso's rise, stumble and humiliating departure in ``King of the Club'' (Collins).

If all this market madness gets you down, just remember that the road to riches can be paved with chicken litter. Blue-collar billionaires fill the pages of two books about the new rich, ``Richistan'' by Robert Frank (Crown) and ``All the Money in the World'' by Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan (Knopf).

Here you'll find Johnnie Bryan Hunt Sr., who made his fortune in poultry litter and trucking, and Ed Bazinet, who grew wealthy selling miniature ceramic villages. ``Richistan'' is the more entertaining of the two, while ``All the Money in the World'' is encyclopedic -- a handy reference work.

Cars, Planes

Industry books worth a look this season include ``Zoom'' (Twelve), in which Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran describe the race to build the car of the future. In ``Boeing Versus Airbus'' (Knopf), John Newhouse provides a brisk primer for anyone who wants to understand a turbulent business where politics, national pride and money collide. ``Deluxe'' by Dana Thomas (Penguin Press) laments how the luxury-goods business has ``lost its luster'' by pandering to the middle market.

What book can you buy for that special someone who lives in Richistan? You might try ``The House the Rockefellers Built'' by Robert F. Dalzell Jr. and Lee Baldwin Dalzell (John Macrae), the story of how John D. Rockefeller Sr. and Jr. matched wits over the building of Kykuit, a dynastic seat above the Hudson River.

And if you think your favorite Richistani has lost touch, consider ``Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt'' by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Basic). Unlike Andrew Carnegie in his time (or Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in ours), Vanderbilt proved something of a Scrooge, tarnishing his own reputation.

Say ``Bah, humbug!'' at your peril.

(James Pressley writes for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this review: James Pressley in Brussels at jpressley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: December 5, 2007 01:53 EST