Financial Literature

Financial literature is in abundance. But it is funny to see how number of titles follows the current trends. Until several months ago, titles offering riches were selling like crazy. Nowadays it's the titles about doom and gloom that are filling the shelves. Has the world really changed that much in such a short time? I don't think so.
I've seen several opinions about this and lots of the online advertising is only for the books about surviving the crisis. Vanguard has an article about it - here.
It is a fact that the earnings are falling across all the asset classes. Now it's a matter of preserving the capital. So, defensive assets - cash and bonds - are fixed-income assets and their value should be less volatile than stocks. But, realistically, even cash and bonds have their risks. Australian Dollar fell against Euro some 20-30% in the last 6 months. That almost matches the sharemarket rout. It is quite hard to talk about safe investments nowadays.