The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

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.

Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 03/15/2010
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.17h x 6.34w x 1.05d
ISBN: 9780393072235


Award: L.A. Times Book Prize - Winner
Award: Robert F. Kennedy Book Award - Winner


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 07/15/2009 pg. 66
Library Journal Prepub Alert 11/01/2009 pg. 44
Entertainment Weekly 03/19/2010 pg. 95
Library Journal 04/15/2010 pg. 91
Entertainment Weekly 04/09/2010 pg. 79
New York Times Book Review 04/18/2010 pg. 14
New York Review of Books 06/10/2010 pg. 37
Choice 07/01/2010
Newsweek 08/02/2010 pg. 23
Christian Century 12/14/2010 pg. 25
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2010 pg. 94
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/08/2010 pg. 22

About the Author
Lewis, Michael: - Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children.