One thing these five bestsellers have in common: They blame that mother of all scapegoats, greed (among other things) for the economic collapse of 2008-09. (Click on the images to see more details or to purchase at Amazon.com.)

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And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street’s Greed and
Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees
By David Faber
Wiley 2009, 208 pages $17.79 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

In And Then the Roof Caved In, a CNBC reporter traces the roots of the economic collapse of 2008-09 to failures of investment banks, mortgage lenders, ratings agencies, and the U.S. government. It all started when the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates to historic lows after 9/11/01.

The Housing Boom and Bust
By Thomas Sowell
Basic 2009, 192 pages
$16.47 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

In The Housing Boom and Bust, a prolific political journalist explains the economics and politics of the housing boom and its collapse. He pulls no punches when discussing politicians of either party, the financial dangers they created, or the distractions they created later to escape their own responsibility for what happened.

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
By Lawrence G. McDonald and Patrick Robinson
Crown Business 2009, 368 pages
$17.20 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

The demise of the nation’s oldest investment bank was a devastating blow to the world’s financial system. The authors of A Colossal Failure, one a former Lehman VP, blame the firm’s executives who were arrogant and recklessly addicted to growth.

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
By William D. Cohan
Doubleday 2009, 480 pages
$18.45 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

In House of Cards, Cohan, a financial journalist, traces the beginning of Wall Street’s collapse to the fall of Bear Stearns. He “vividly documents the mix of arrogance, greed, recklessness, and pettiness that took down the 86-year-old brokerage house, and then the entire economy.” (BusinessWeek) He “does a brilliant job of sketching in the eccentric, vulgar, greedy, profane and coarse individuals” who ruined Bear Stearns. (Los Angeles Times)

Fool’s Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe
By Gillian Tett
Free Press 2009, 304 pages
$16.56 hardcover, $9.99 Kindle

A Financial Times journalist details how the market in securitized credit derivatives was perverted by greed, arrogance, and delusion, in Fool’s Gold.