Even though Too Big to Fail was written during the same year as the recent financial collapse occurred, Andrew Ross Sorkin has written what I predict will be the definitive book on the subject. It not only tells a gripping “perfect storm” story—with all the gory details as our 401k’s disappeared and our financial system became nationalized included—but the author humanizes all the players, resulting in an imminently readable, albeit lengthy, book.

Each of the major players are shown here—warts and all. Sorkin takes us inside of Henry Paulson’s mind as the Secretary of the Treasury tries to get a grip on the collapse of the investment banks. We see Timothy Geithner “clearly overwhelmed, his eyes darting around his office as he nervously twisted a pen between his fingers.” And Ben Bernanke who sits “politely nodding in his best professorial manner.”

Most riveting are Sorkin’s descriptions of the meetings between the government representatives and the heavy-hitting and heavily-hit CEOs, bringing to mind Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s classic, Barbarians at the Gate. Sorkin describes a call to arms between financial competitors to save such institutions as Lehman, Bank of America, and AIG before the government would get involved this way: “The CEOs had all been milling about, tapping away on their BlackBerrys, and pouring themselves cups of ice water to cool themselves from the miasma of humidity that hung in the [New York Federal Reserve Building]. After the meeting, “the bankers left expressionless and mute, dumbstruck at the magnitude of the work that lay before them.”

Sorkin does not act as only a dispassionate observer, however, and includes his own informed deductions. “Unless those regulations are changed radically … there will continue to be firms that are too big to fail. And when the next, inevitable bubble bursts, the cycle will only repeat itself.” It’s a sobering reflection, but a critical reminder that there is still extreme risk involved when there is extreme reward at stake.

For this kind of book to work, the secret is effective story telling. Bob Woodward has done this kind of reporting for years, and Theodore White’s great The Making of the President series that started in 1960 is the father of the genre. Now Andrew Sorkin has now joined them. Great stories, detailed insider information; it is what places this book among the greats.

This could be the shortest Jack Covert Selects ever: Great book; end of story; next!

Well, let me offer a little more information to help explain my enthusiasm. Levitt and Dubner are the authors of the international best selling Freakonomics, a book that transcended the business book genre because of its approachable economics lessons via quirky storytelling. Superfreakonomics is more of the same, but unlike most sequels, the same is quite welcome and can stand tall on its own merits.

First and foremost, Superfreakonomics offers more of Levitt and Dubner’s “read to the stranger in the seat next to you” stories. These stories make accessible rather arcane economic terms like “price discrimination” and “the principal-agent problem” and the examples used to illustrate these terms are fun, unexpected and memorable. Thumb through the chapters, “How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?” and “Why should suicide bombers buy life insurance?” and you’ll quickly get the picture.

No one can accuse Levitt and Dubner of playing it safe with their material. As well as using rather esoteric subject matter, they also tackle such topics as the often sensitive and still confounding issue of why women MBAs earn less than men. Ultimately, they discover that it may come down to the fact “that many women, even those with MBAs, love kids.” They explain that women MBAs with children work 24 percent fewer hours than men (this after experiencing the obvious job discontinuity that comes with having a child) and that this slows down their career trajectory.

The authors’ also argue, rather convincingly, that it is safer to drive drunk than to walk home from the bar—with the obvious caveat that “a drunk walker isn’t likely to hurt or kill anyone other than her- or himself.” Using government statistics, they find that on a per-mile basis, “a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver.”

They’ve taken the most heat (no pun intended) from environmentalists for suggesting that we can possibly “geoengineer” our way out of global warming, and challenging the dogma that reducing emissions is the only way to save the planet. Uncomfortable deductions? Yes. But you won’t soon forget them and they will certainly make you look at what principles fuel our culture a bit differently.

As with Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner use sharp analysis, unpredictable stories and discomforting deductions to enlighten (and delight) readers. The authors have also done something that is very hard to do: they have created a second book that is as good, if not better than, the first one.