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I am an academic economist doing research on the financial crisis. I read Wessel's book for details about the interventions by the Fed and Treasury in 2008 that I might not have encountered elsewhere. I was not expecting an academic treatise, and my negative review is not in any way related to the journalistic approach taken by the author. Wessel is the economics editor at the Wall Street Journal and appears to have had a great deal of access to Bernanke and Geithner. His insider's perspective unfortunately produced very little insight. You can learn (p.115 AND p.192) that Bernanke used a "Polycom" speakerphone, but not that Hank Paulson and Richard Fuld were bitter rivals. On a more substantive level, the book continually updates a "dashboard" with the Dow Jones average and the market cap of Citigroup. The success of each intervention is judged by the reaction of the stock market, generally within the day, to the policy. Does Wessel not remember that the Dow hit an all time high in October 2007, six months after subprime problems had emerged at Bear Stearns? There is almost no discussion of the complex, leveraged financial instruments (e.g. CDOs and CDS) that amplified the crisis and made traditional monetary policy ineffective. A more thorough account would have also explored the regulatory failure of the Fed and federal government prior to the crisis. On balance, the book is too narrow for someone just trying to go beyond the headlines and too superficial for those looking ahead to the next crisis.