Though the global financial crisis has spawned shoals of instant histories, mostly by small-fry journalists, there are precious few first-hand accounts of what it was like to be one of the big fish swimming in the treacherous economic seas of the past two decades. Now comes Icelandic entrepreneur Bjorgolfur Thor Bjorgolfsson with a gripping autobiography that describes not only his part in his homeland's banking blow-up but also his earlier career as a brewer in the "Wild East" that was post-Soviet Russia. Anyone who wants to understand the animal spirits that propelled the world economy all the way underwater in 2008 - and then slowly raised it back to the surface again - will relish Billions to Bust and Back Niall Ferguson