The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge.
Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.
Michael Lewis's investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington, DC, we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor, and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations.
Industry Reviews
"Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller's ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling... Combining his easy familiarity with finance and the talents of a travel writer, Mr. Lewis sets off in these pages to give the reader a guided tour through some of the disparate places hard hit by the fiscal tsunami of 2008, like Greece, Iceland and Ireland, tracing how very different people for very different reasons gorged on the cheap credit available in the prelude to that disaster. The book - based on articles Mr. Lewis wrote for Vanity Fair magazine - is a companion piece of sorts to The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, his bestselling 2010 book about the fiscal crisis... Mr. Lewis's ability to find people who can see what is obvious to others only in retrospect or who somehow embody something larger going on in the financial world is uncanny. And in this book he weaves their stories into a sharp-edged narrative that leaves readers with a visceral understanding of the fiscal recklessness that lies behind today's headlines about Europe's growing debt problems and the risk of contagion they now pose to the world." -- Michiko Kakutani - New York Times "Lewis's rare gift as a guide through the world of credit default swaps and sovereign debt doesn't come simply from his deep understanding of how the global financial system works ... also his skill as a storyteller, his ability to tell the larger tale through fascinating human stories of greed, excess, and self-delusion." -- Chuck Leddy - Boston Globe "[Lewis's] explanations of thorny financial processes are surprisingly compelling, his characters entertaining." -- Jessica Loudis - BookForum
