A brilliant account—character-rich and darkly humorous—of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff. Truth really is stranger than fiction. Who better than the author of the signature bestseller Liar’s Poker to explain how the event we were told was impossible—the free fall of the American economy—finally occurred; how the things that we wanted, like ridiculously easy money and greatly expanded home ownership, were vehicles for that crash; and how shareholder demand for profit forced investment executives to eat the forbidden fruit of toxic derivatives.
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Michael Lewis’s splendid cast of characters includes villains, a few heroes, and a lot of people who look very, very foolish: high government officials, including the watchdogs; heads of major investment banks (some overlap here with previous category); perhaps even the face in your mirror. In this trenchant, raucous, irresistible narrative, Lewis writes of the goats and of the few who saw what the emperor was wearing, and gives them, most memorably, what they deserve. He proves yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times. .
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (Hardcover) Reviews
The one star reviews are because there is no kindle edition available. They are not people who have read the book. Shame on Amazon for punishing the author this way. And the buyers of all those kindles.
I just read through all the reviews. 20 of 21 one-star reviews were to punish Amazon for not making the book available on Kindle at the time of their review. They haven’t read the book and don’t intend to until it’s on Kindle–but that’s not going to stop them from punishing Michael Lewis to get back at Amazon. I suppose Amazon should have two rating systems–one for what the author actually wrote, and a second to tally the numbers of those expressing disapproval for the book not being available on Kindle.
The Big Short is a wonderful read, well-written and informative. Lewis is a storyteller who roots his understanding of human activity in humans rather than in larger “processes”. There’s nothing wrong with observing the latter, but without humans there would be no economics, financial markets, etc. Nature doesn’t provide for them, people do, and people have stories. They make decisions. They do intelligent things, selfish things and nutty things. These things are the threads woven into the larger tapestry. Lewis doesn’t tell the WHOLE story of the financial meltdown, but he identifies many of the key players and how their decisions made a difference to the Big Short. He names Names. His prose, as always, is clear, witty and informative. The Big Short filled in many gaps in my understanding of how smart people can make a lot of money without really knowing (or caring) about how their industry actually works or what the consequences of their decisions might be. Makes you wonder.
