Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises

Why it’s on the list: Dalio’s template for deleveragings — the archetypal debt cycle, then forty-eight historical cases run against it, with the deflationary and inflationary variants separated. Released free as a PDF, and the most mechanical account there is of how a credit cycle ends.

No page_count: the work is published as a three-part set (and as a free PDF), and the page figures on record describe individual volumes rather than the whole.

Where I saw it: In the reply thread to @SpencrGreenberg’s question, “What non-fiction book taught you the most about how the world (or how humanity or society) really works?” (June 5, 2025) — a crowd-sourced list Kyle recovered by hand and saved to his Apple Note “Books To Read”; the full set of replies lives on A question for you — What non-fiction… (tweet). It was listed there as “Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises”.

Connections

• Ray Dalio — the author.
• Debt — the cycle the book is a template for.
• Macroeconomics — history used as a dataset rather than as illustration.
• The Price of Peace — the intellectual history of the same problem, named in a different thread Kyle saved.
• A question for you — What non-fiction… (tweet) — the thread this recommendation came from.