Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street

But for all their outrageous behavior, they were in fact presiding over enormous changes in the world economy. With the eye and ear of a born storyteller, Michael Lewis shows us how things really worked on Wall Street. From an unlikely beginning (art history at Princeton?) he rose in two short years from Salomon Brothers trainee to Geek (the lowest form of life on the trading floor) to Big Swinging Dick, the most dangerous beast in the jungle, a bond salesman who could turn over millions of dollars' worth of doubtful bonds with just one call. Lewis's job, simply described, was to transfer money, in the form of bonds, from those outside America who saved to those inside America who consumed. In doing so, he generated tens of millions of dollars for Salomon Brothers, and earned for himself a ringside seat on the greatest financial spectacle of the decade: the leveraging of America.. In the Salomon training program a roomful of aspirants is stunned speechless by the vitriolic profanity of the Human Piranha; out on the trading floor, bond traders throw telephones at the heads of underlings and Salomon chairman Gutfreund challenges his chief trader to a hand of liar's poker for one million dollars; around the world in London, Tokyo, and New York, bright young men like Michael Lewis, connected by telephones and computer terminals, swap gross jokes and find retail buyers for the staggering debt of individual companies or whole countries. The bond traders, wearing greed and amb

Lewis illustrates how economic decisions made at the national level changed securities markets and made bonds the most lucrative game on the Street. Military Acad . His description of the firm's personalities and of the events from 1984 through the crash of October 1987 are vivid and memorable. Readers of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities ( LJ 11/15/87) are likely to enjoy this personal memoir. With this as a metaphor, Lewis describes his four years with the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers, from his bizarre hiring through the training program to his years as a successful bond trader. Lib., West Point, N.Y.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. BOMC and Fortune Book Club selection.- Joseph Barth, U.S. From Library Journal As described by Lewis, liar's poker is a game played in idle moments by workers on Wall Street, the objective of which i

. Michael Lewis, is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, and Flash Boys. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children

Fluid narrative about the history of a sector, a company and a professional Tiago Marques The narrative is very fluid and I like the way the author swings between (i) the history of financial markets in 70/80’s, (ii) the rise and fall of Salomon Brothers and (iii) his own personal experiences inside the firm. The amplitude of the themes changes a lot, from broa. "If you like humor, finance and inflated egos, you won't be disappointed!" according to Miller.. Lewis is prolific and entertaining. I have read only half of the books he has written but someday I will have read them all - he's that good. This book describes his early days, just out of college, as an investment banker. The locker room language may be a bit coarse for some r. Abacus said The birth of a nonfiction writing star. As a full disclosure, I am a big Michael Lewis fan. I have read only half a dozen of his books (he has written many more). And, in my mind even a bad Michael Lewis book is still a great book. Given that, my review may not be objective. But, it may impart why I liked this particu