Maybe Europe Can’t Recover From the Financial Crisis

If you read only one history of the global financial crisis and the turbulent decade that resulted, I recommend “Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World,” by Columbia University historian Adam Tooze. Few authors are as capable of weaving together economics, policy and geopolitics into a coherent whole. Not only does Tooze cover every critical aspect of the crash in the U.S., but he offers deep insight into Europe’s slow-motion disaster.

This importance of the latter is underappreciated. Although the crisis began in the U.S., the breakdown it triggered in Europe had graver consequences. A decade later, the economies of the U.S. and the European Union have both largely recovered, but some of the hardest-hit European countries — Greece, Italy and Spain — are not in such good shape: