Building on insights gleaned from many years of work in the banking industry and drawing on a vast trove of data, Richard Vague argues in A Brief History of Doom that financial crises follow a pattern that makes them both predictable and avoidable.

Philanthropist and former banker Richard Vague is a managing partner of Gabriel Investments, Chairman of The Governor's Woods Foundation, and author of The Next Economic Disaster: Why It's Coming and How to Avoid It, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.