Riches Among the Ruins: Adventures in the Dark Corners of the Global Economy, by Robert P. Smith, with Peter Zheutlin, is one of the best books I have read about what it has been like to do business in the crazy and ever more linked international debt markets of the past 30 years.

It's an immensely engaging and often exciting memoir by a remarkably unassuming but big-risk-taking individual who somehow made his way through the likes of El Salvador, Iraq, Nigeria and Russia (and the Boston area as a collections lawyer!) without having his head blown off.

Published by Amacom, it reads like a novel, with enough adventures in Third World places (especially near war zones) to provide material for about 10 movies.

And the lessons drawn by the adventurous Mr. Smith, who is based in Boston and New York and runs Turan Corp., are particularly germane to today's financial crisis, here and abroad.