NONFICTION

Extraordinary Circumstances
by Cynthia Cooper
(Wiley, 256 pages, $27.95)

The former V.P. for WorldCom’s internal audit department tells the story of how she came to divulge the telecom giant’s corporate fraud. Though bookended by her whistleblowing and its aftermath, Cooper’s autobiography is a meticulous chronicle of her life as she goes from high-school graduate to big-time auditor. A tiresome sift through her overdramatic ramblings proves worthwhile in the end, if only because you get the lowdown on Bernie Ebbers’ fascinating idiosyncrasies. —Jessica Liebman

Super Crunchers
by Ian Ayres
(Bantam, 258 pages, $25)

This is the season of the economist, thanks to Freakonomics. Leave it to the dismal scientists to recognize the market potential of knockoffs. So here comes Super Crunchers, by Ayres, an econometrician and Yale professor. His thesis is provocative: Complex statistical models could be used to market products more intelligently, craft better movies, and solve health-care problems—if only we could get past our statistics phobia. At times, Super Crunchers reaches freakonomically counterintuitive heights, but too often it bogs down in unsurprising examples. —Jesse Eisinger

Golfing on the Roof of the World
by Rick Lipsey
(Bloomsbury, 257 pages, $24.95) 

The kingdom of Bhutan has soaring Himalayan peaks, snow leopards, monasteries on precipices, yak pizza, and a 1,400-year-old Buddhist culture—all good reasons to visit. Lipsey goes to write about playing golf and winds up returning for three months to serve as a teaching pro at the country’s only legit course, the nine-holer that sits 7,500 feet above sea level. Long on Bhutan’s magic and short on golf, this charming account captures a remote nation coming out of its shell. “Gross national happiness” was the former king’s goal. No telling what a game championed by dour Scots will do for that. —James P. Sterba

A Demon of Our Own Design
by Richard Bookstaber
(Wiley, 276 pages, $27.95)

Bookstaber, a hedge fund manager, offers a quant’s-eye view of the dangers facing Wall Street, in this memoir of a numbers wonk. The book begins promisingly enough: “While it is not strictly true that I caused the two great financial crises of the late 20th century . . . let’s just say I was in the vicinity.” But things get geeky from there, and Book­staber, who previously worked in risk management at Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley, is comfortable talking mostly about exchange-traded funds and futures. That’s too bad, given that he has an important point to make: While hedge funds and derivatives have made traders rich, they’ve made the markets a lot more dangerous for the rest of us. —Kyle Pope

The Clarks of Cooperstown
by Nicholas Fox Weber
(Knopf, 420 pages, $35)

Weber uses meticulous—and sometimes patience-straining—art criticism to make sense of the storied family that helped build the Singer ­sewing-machine empire. His main focus is not Edward Clark, the business genius behind the company, but his grandsons, Stephen and Sterling Clark. Bitter rivals, they amassed competing collections (with works by Goya, Matisse, and Hopper, among others); influenced the growth of major American museums; and pioneered the development of uptown Manhattan. The problem with Weber’s account? Demonstrating that the brothers’ art-­buying habits justify a 420-page biography.—Mary Bridges

FICTION

Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy
by Doug Stumpf
(HarperCollins, 304 pages, $24.95)

Gil Benicio shines shoes at a major Wall Street firm, and he’s caught on to the trader who’s been holing up in the janitor’s closet to chat away on his cell phone. When Gil, a charismatic immigrant, passes this information along to an old shoeshine client—a magazine journalist looking for his big break—the story takes off. As the catalyst for exposing an insider-trading scheme, Gil comes off as a little too naive at times, but his anecdotes about and observations of Wall Street types are amusingly accurate. Stumpf, an editor at Vanity Fair, delivers an entertaining first novel about a world in which people play by their own rules.—Jennifer Close

Power Play
by Joseph Finder
(St. Martin’s Press, 384 pages, $24.95)

After the bigwigs of Ham­mond Aerospace decamp to a remote fishing lodge for their annual retreat, skilled hostage- takers interrupt the trust games and cigar smoking. Can anyone save these puffy company bosses? Enter Jake Landry: He drinks box wine, owns a golden retriever, and has a troubled past. Any suspense-novel elements missing? No, because Jake’s feisty, auburn-haired ex-girlfriend is both hostage and love interest. The novel is a genre-obedient tale of corporate malfeasance, with an irreverent hero who really just wants to save his girl. But Finder makes the pages fun to turn. —M.B.