The Big Short : Inside the doomsday machine

The stock market crash of 2008 gave America a small glimpse of the true nature of Wall Street?the 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.

With his unmatched capacity to turn dense information into a nimble and thrilling page-turner, Michael Lewis unpacks this disaster.

He creates 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 ever-rising 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 best sellers. Perfectly voiced by Jesse Boggs, this book proves yet again that Michael Lewis is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.

?2010 Michael Lewis (P)2010 Simon & Schuster