El-Erian is no stranger to Barron's readers. He has shared his penetrating views on developing and other markets numerous times in these pages, first as a manager of Pimco's highly regarded emerging-markets fund, then as president of the Harvard Endowment. Today he's back in California as co-chief executive and co-chief investment officer of Pimco. El-Erian's latest book, When Markets Collide, describes the causes of the recent traumas in the financial system, and will be published this month. For a sneak peek at the book's contents and El-Erian's latest thoughts on the markets, keep reading.

Barron's: If you put "credit crisis" into Amazon.com's search engine, you come up with pages of titles, several of them new, including one by George Soros! What makes your book different?