another great read , absoulutely gripping and fascinating , is "When Genius Failed" by Roger Lowenstein, the Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management.
They basically failed because the did NOT close losing positions soon enough (as well as fundamentally misunderstanding the way markets "behave") my gross oversimplification, but through all of the Nobel Prize winning maths, it was human nature (weakness) which was the cause of the acceleration of the disaster
portrays Wall St. even worse than the Blodgett (PoS) debacle etc etc
