Summer reading list for commercial bankers

If you’re headed out on vacation in the coming weeks, you might be interested to know about some books that banking industry insiders recommend. American Banker had a good list recently, and a few interesting reads that made it to the list include:

“Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland” by Edward McClelland (recommended by Jeff Quayle, senior vice president and general counsel of the Ohio Bankers League). “This book is a narrative history of the industrial heartland over the last 30 years, so it is a good story for those interested in [the] human side of recent history or economics. It will be of particular interest to anyone that had any roots in the industrial Midwest” Quayle was quoted as saying in the article.

“Act of Congress: How America’s Essential Institution Works, and How It Doesn’t” by Robert Kaiser (recommended by Tim Arthun, director of government relations at Pennsylvania Association of Community Bankers). Arthun says “Act of Congress” gives an inside look at the “crafting and drafting” of the Dodd-Frank Act, including a look at the congressional staff involved, the article said.

“The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order” by Benn Steil (recommended by Dan Littman, senior payments research consultant and economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland). Littman said the book provides “a terrifically written, gossipy account of the origins of Bretton Woods … Since the world spent several decades under the clumsy (and, to the U.S., costly) Bretton Woods regime, and since you sometimes hear people harkening back to that time as a golden age (which it surely was not), … it is an important read for our day” said Littman in the article.

For more interesting reads, view the article on American Banker, here.