Everyone likes to speculate about life and culture at the big financial institutions, but the surest window into the corporate soul is what people are reading. Luckily, Amazon's "Purchase Circles” provides a cheat-sheet that lets you look up which books employees have purchased on-line.

At most of the white-shoe firms, the bestseller lists are all work and no play. JP Morgan, for example, has a string of must-reads on high-yield bonds, derivatives and risk management, starting with Stocks, Bonds, Options, Futures. But at least a few people are thumbing through Essays That Will Get You Into Business School (number 16). The only book on the list that manages to give hardcore finance and technology a wide berth is The Manhattan Directory of Private Nursery Schools (number six). Apparently, it's worth investing early.

Over at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the toddlers' directory is number eight, tucked among a raft of books on portfolio management, market-making and Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success.

Merrill Lynch's reading list, meanwhile, is crammed with evidence of its hot pursuit of the high-net-worth crowd. Marketing to the Affluent, Wall Street to Main Street and Selling to the Affluent are its top sellers. Interestingly enough, the only work of fiction being read is The Way We Live Now (number 17), Trollope's page-turner about a villainous 19th-century financier who dupes the members of that earlier era's high-net-worth set.

Deutsche Bank has perhaps the most austere reading habits, with tomes on credit derivatives and financial engineering followed by Bankruptcy Investing: How to Profit from Distressed Companies (number three). And so it goes, cheerlessly, all the way to number 20, a book about processing securities transactions.

Other banks are more introspective. First Union, which announced a $2.9 billion charge against earnings in the second quarter of this year (connected to losses from the Money Store), appears ready to retool itself. Every one of its bestsellers draws a bead on leadership and morale. The top three: Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right (a novel way of looking at the Money Store fiasco), The 7 Acts of Courage and The Power Principle: Influence With Honor. First Union has another 14 books about self-help management on its top-20 list.

At UBS, The Fall of UBS is dangling at number seven, below two Harry Potter installments and the scary Hannibal. Perhaps Dirk Schutz's tell-all about the once-illustrious German bank will make it onto PaineWebber's bestseller list, but employees at the brokerage firm are currently busy digging lint out of their navels. On the corporate coffee table (besides a few books on investing) are Life Is Not a Game of Perfect: Finding Your Real Talent and Making It Work for You and The Brand Called You, a tract on how to turn yourself into a memorable financial adviser. Thank you, PaineWebber!

Lehman Brothers, meanwhile, continues its journey from a fixed-income trading firm to a full-service global investment bank focusing on high-yield underwriting and M&As. After Greed and Glory on Wall Street: The Fall of the House of Lehman, there are a few volumes on credit derivatives and fixed-income instruments, and the cautionary The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders.

HSBC is one global bank with an inexplicably simple list. Who Moved My Cheese? a parable about career and change, is followed by three Harry Potter novels and The Carbohydrate Addict's Lifespan Program. That's it. The bank that takes the cake, however, is Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank, with four bestsellers about coping with carbohydrates, a smattering of titles on body-building and no books about finance.