Includes bibliographical references.

I. A BRAND-NEW KIND OF CRASH. Riding the wild bull / Stephen Koepp -- The crash of 87: Chicagos shadow markets led free fall in a plunge that began right at opening / Scott McMurry & Robert L. Rose -- From the Brady Commission Report -- From Black Monday: the catastrophe of Oct 18, 1987... and beyond / Tim Metz -- From Liars poker: rising through the wreckage on Wall Street / Michael Lewis -- The lonely feeling of small investors / Stephen Labaton -- Yuppies last rites readied / Richard J. Meislin -- What goes up / Eric J. Weiner -- Did the computer cause the crash? / Lester C. Thurow -- Crash-proofing the market; a lot of expert opinions but few results / Terri Thompson -- Short circuits / The Economist -- Crash course: Black Mondays biggest lesson: dont run scared / Robert J. Shiller -- II. FOREIGNERS GONE WILD. Mutual funds quarterly report; the forecast looks brighter for adventure travel / Reed Abelson -- Thailand warns currency speculators / The New York Times (NYT) -- A Thai business wonders, will it all crumble? / David Holley -- Reporter associate Jeremy Kahn, "Saving Asia" / Paul Krugman -- From Frontlines "The Crash" / Interview with Rob Johnson ; Interview with Jeffrey D Sachs -- Finance and economics: a detour or a derailment? / The Economist -- Pulling Russias chain / Michael Lewis -- How the eggheads cracked / Michael Lewis -- 10 years after the Asian crisis, were not out of the woods yet / Joseph Stiglitz -- Asias long road to recovery / Keith Bradsher -- Tracking an online trend, and a route to suicide / Choe Sang-Hun --

III. THE NEW NEW PANIC. Bigger Netscape offering / NYT -- Underwriters raise offer price for Netscape Communication / NYT -- With internet cachet, not profit, a new stock is Wall Streets darling / Laurence Zuckerman -- How net fever sent shares of a firm on a 3-day joy ride / Carrick Mollenkamp & Karen Lundegaard -- "New new money," from The New New Thing / Michael Lewis -- Cooling it: Wall Street firms try to keep internet mania from ending badly / Rebecca Buckman & Aaron Lucchetti -- Burning up / Jack Willoughby -- from Dot.com: The greatest story ever sold / John Cassidy -- The high price of research: caveat investor: stock and research analysts covering dot-coms arent as independent as you think / Erick Schonfeld -- Fumble.com: internet companies threw millions into the air at the Super Bowl. Theyre still pretending they scored a touchdown / Katharine Mieszkowski -- Meet the dumbest dot-com in the world / Mark Gimein -- The financial page: how mountebanks became moguls / James Surowiecki -- Dot coms: what have we learned? / Jeremy Useem -- In defense of the boom / Michael Lewis -- IV. THE PEOPLES PANIC. How to get rich in real estate / Dave Barry -- Shaky foundation: rising home prices cast appraisers in a harsh light / John Hechinger -- The next crash / John Cassidy -- As bubble speculation rises, industry sees little fear / Robert Julavits -- This is the sound of a bubble bursting / Peter S. Goodman -- Opening statement of Charman Christopher Dodd: hearing on "Mortgage market turmoil: causes and consequences" -- Subprime homesick blues / James Surowiecki -- Triple-A failure / Roger Lowenstein -- from "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" / Larry Roberts -- Bear CEOs handling of crisis raises issues / Kate Kelly -- What Wall Streets CEOs dont know can kill you / Michael Lewis -- The Bear flu: how it spread / David Henry & Matthew Goldstein -- A Wall Street trader draws some subprime lessons / Michael Lewis -- After the moneys gone / Paul Krugman -- Hedge funds come unstuck on truth-twisting lies / Matthew Lynn -- Trader made billions on subprime / Gregory Zuckerman.

An analysis of five financial upheavals in recent history includes coverage of the 1987 stock market crash, the 1998 Russian default (and the consequent collapse of U.S. hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management), the Asian currency crisis of 1999, the Internet bubble of 1995-2001, and the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis, in an anecdotal report that reveals how public knowledge differed from what was actually taking place.