As a first-generation entrepreneur, I’m committed to learning as much as I can about entrepreneurship. The best way I’ve found to do it is to study other entrepreneurs. To do that, I read a book every week, usually a biography. I share it in my Library on this site, and every Sunday, I post the latest book I read.

I recently listened to an interview of Josh Kopelman, founding partner of First Round Capital, a well-known, seed-stage, venture capital firm. One of Kopelman’s points is that most of the profits in venture capital are made in parts of the financial market cycle driven by “extreme f*ing greed” and “irrational disequilibrium” (see the clip here). This interview reminded me that financial market cycles have a profound impact on entrepreneurs and the investors who back them.

Last year, I read Bull!, which chronicles the financial booms and busts between 1982 and 2004. I wanted to go back further. I found exactly what I was looking for in a book that goes back hundreds of years, A Short History of Financial Euphoria. It’s short, a quick read, but does a great job of recounting history’s most famous financial bubbles—from the 1600s’ Tulip Mania to the 1980s’ junk bond frenzy and savings and loan crisis.

This book was straightforward and read like a mini biographical anthology. It details each bubble, including its origins, how it was created, and who the major players were. It describes the patterns each major speculative financial bubble follows and how to spot the signs of a bubble.

Anyone interested in the financial cycles and how to spot speculative euphoria may enjoy this book.