The Great Unravelling by Paul Krugman Penguin $144 Taken together, Krugman's hard-hitting economic columns for the New York Times from January 2000 to January 2003, form a chronicle of the years when the American economy went wrong - when the heady optimism of the late 1990s gave way to renewed gloom. It's also an attempt to explain the how and why: how it was possible for a country with so much going for it to go downhill so fast, and why the US leaders made such bad decisions. It's essentially a story about leadership - incredibly bad leadership, in the private sector and in the corridors of power. In particular it's an indictment of US President George W. Bush and his administration. From scandalous tax breaks for the rich to selling the phoney war in Iraq, from bogus Greenspanomics to blatant theft, Krugman insists the radical right is conning the world.