Author: Lewis, Michael
Brand: W. W. Norton & Company
Edition: First Printing
Number Of Pages: 288
Release Date: 02-03-2010
Details: Product Description When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine, and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking. The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 best-selling Liar's Poker. Who got it right? he asks. Who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles? Out of this handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times. Review I read Lewis for the same reasons I watch Tiger Woods. I'll never play like that. But it's good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like.--Malcolm Gladwell - New York Times Book Review No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis....[he] does a nimble job of using his subjects' stories to explicate the greed, idiocies and hypocrisies of a system notably lacking in grown-up supervision....Writing in faintly Tom Wolfe-ian prose, Mr. Lewis does a colorful job of introducing the lay reader to the Darwinian world of the bond market.--Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times One of the best business books of the past two decades.--Malcolm Gladwell - New York Times Book Review Superb: Michael Lewis doing what he does best, illuminating the idiocy, madness and greed of modern finance. . . . Lewis achieves what I previously imagined impossible: He makes subprime sexy all over again.--Andrew Leonard - Salon.com [A]n incredible piece of commentary on Wall Street.--Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) I read it, marked it up for my staff, underlined it, made copies and asked them to read it.--Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) I recommend everyone within the sound of my voice to read [this] book.--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) From the Back Cover Why Michael Lewis, according to Malcolm Gladwell, "is the finest storyteller of our generation" Liar's Poker "So memorable and alive. . . . It's one of those rare works that encapsulate and define an era. . . . Remember the 1980s? When you want to recall this roaring decade, pick up a copy of Liar's Poker." -- Fortune "Devastatingly funny." --New York Moneyball "The best business book Lewis has written. It may be the best business book anyone has written." --Mark Gerson, The Weekly Standard "A brilliantly told tale. . . . Michael Lewis's beautiful obsession with the idea of value has once again yielded gold." --Garry Trudeau About the Author Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of Liar's Poker, The Money Culture, The New New Thing, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Panic, Home Game, The Big Short, and Boomerang, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children.
UPC: 352748465451
EAN: 9780393072235
Languages: English
Binding: Hardcover
Item Condition: UsedVeryGood