The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
If you’ve turned on the financial news or watched Jon Stewart in the last couple weeks, chances are you’ve heard of The Big Short, the latest Wall-Street expose by Liar’s Poker author Michael Lewis. In The Big Short, Lewis profiles a handful of investors who foresaw the 2008 economic crisis and made millions betting against the market. Lewis says in the book that each survivor of the crash “told you something about the state of the financial system, in the same way that people who survive a plane crash told you something about the accident.” Lewis doesn’t attempt to explain every detail of what happened, but his survivor tales demonstrate how big banks and rating agencies successfully disguised the risk associated with the subprime mortgage market. According to Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times, “No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis.” Even if you know nothing about finance, this book is a must read.
“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, New York Times
“There aren’t many reasons to be happy about the global financial crisis, but here’s one: that it brought Michael Lewis back to his roots, to produce what is probably the single best piece of financial journalism ever written.” – Felix Salmon, Barnes & Noble Review
“If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis’s, The Big Short.” – Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post
“The Big Short is superb: Michael Lewis doing what he does best, illuminating the idiocy, madness and greed of modern finance.” – Andrew Leonard, Salon
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