Although the financial crisis of 2008 and after appeared in many ways to have sprung from nowhere, its genesis possessed strong antecedents. In this book, Peter Montiel analyzes ten case studies of crises that have occurred in a diverse set of countries (including industrial, transition and emerging-market economies) over the past thirty years. The examination of these experiences is conducted within a common analytical framework guided by the three "generations" of crisis models that have been developed by economists to explain currency crises. The crises are "financial" in the sense that, while they are all considered major currency crises, they combine to varying degrees elements of banking crises as well as sovereign debt crises. They have been selected not only for their importance in terms of the size and prominence of the countries involved and the severity of their impacts on the relevant economies, but also because of the lessons that, both individually and in comparison to each other, they provide. The specific crises covered are the 1981-82 Chilean crisis, the 1992 ERM crisis, the 1994 Mexican crisis, the 1997 Asian crisis, the 1998 Russian crisis, the 1999 Brazilian crisis, the 1999 Ecuadorean crisis, the 2000 Turkish crisis, the 2001-02 Argentine crisis, and the 2009 Icelandic crisis. The historical timeline presented provides essential pointers to the world's current predicament.