In the wake of the financial crisis, a slew of books hit the shelves claiming to provide the definitive guide to what went wrong. Most focused on a combination of the key personalities involved – guilty US policymakers, greedy prominent bankers or the many hapless politicians blindsided by the speed and size of the meltdown – and a technical analysis of the complex financial mechanisms at work.

Frankly, most of the population couldn’t care less about what it was like to work in the executive offices of Lehman Brothers. Writers who have spent months meticulously researching the telephone conversations between major Wall Street players have without doubt performed an important function in recording a critical moment in economic and indeed general history. But beyond those with an unhealthy fascination with investment banking, whose shelves are already stocked with books like Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker and John Rolfe and Peter Troob’s Monkey Business, most readers have been deprived of a literary response that does more than hold a magnifying glass to the insularity of high finance.

Aftershock redresses the balance. Legrain’s work does not neglect the causes and progression of the financial crisis, and the opening chapters are an essential, if occasionally overwhelmingly dense, education on the matter. However, what distinguishes this hugely ambitious work is that the emphasis shifts from the historical narrative to the policy imperatives, first targeted specifically at international finance but then quickly expanding in scope to take in, among others, domestic economic policy, climate change, inequality and the many aspects of globalisation.

Legrain’s occasionally radical proposals are sensible, provocative and intellectually sound. His diagnosis of the continuing failures of financial markets as currently constituted is as precise as it is worrying, and in highlighting the monopolistic power of a few institutions Legrain gives voice to what has thus far remained largely unsaid. These, along with the previously mentioned tour de force through the crisis, would be enough to constitute a respectable book in isolation. He chooses instead to articulate a range of broader themes, picking apart global trade flows, labour mobility, protectionism, immigration, investment and taxation. And though his analysis is rooted in economic theory and data, his conclusions are often impassioned calls to action, informed by fact as well as by an obvious personal ideology.

The humanity running through the work, illustrated not only through Legrain’s own clearly audible voice but also by the appearance of a number of individual characters used to exemplify a particular global trend, helps soften the barrage of statistics used to quantify the book’s arguments. The problem with coming across a page littered with GDP percentages and debt ratios is that the general reader is perfectly entitled to glaze over. Legrain is usually rescued by his ability to construct intelligible conclusions from data, and to communicate these in everyday language.

This ability fills a gaping intellectual hole in the progressive landscape. There is no shortage of advocates for more aggressive taxation on property speculation, for example, or the need for action on climate change, but with Legrain the sense is not simply that he believes in a particular course of action – it is that he knows that it is right thing to do. The more commentators, journalists, thinktankers and journalists who are able to authoritatively engage in the debate on the global economy from a perspective that differs from the status quo, the better.

Aftershock is not a title that suggests the nuanced and difficult arguments contained beneath the garish red and black cover. But then a title such as An Analysis of Not Only the Financial Crisis, But of the Thematic Development of the Global Economy Over the Last and Next Decades, From a Progressive But Non-partisan Perspective would probably sell far fewer books. That said, this is unlikely to fly to the top of the bestseller list. In parts it is more of an academic work than a work of popular non-fiction, and despite Legrain’s best attempts some of his conclusions may simply be too abstract for the casual reader.

However, anyone who claims to have a view on the value or otherwise of globalisation, the need to punish bankers for causing the financial crisis, the problems of immigration, or indeed frankly anything to do with the global economy, simply must read these painstakingly crafted 395 pages. It is absolutely worth the effort.