Liar's Poker

Michael Lewis

Mar 2010 · W. W. Norton & Company

About this ebook

The time was the 1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar’s Poker. Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years—a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, here is Michael Lewis’s knowing and hilarious insider’s account of an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune.

Ratings and reviews

I highly recommend that you read Liar's Poker before you read The Big Short. In order to understand Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and the problems that they created such as the near collapse of our financial system in 2008/2009, you have to go back to the beginning. Liar's Poker traces the origins of MBS in Solomon Brothers. Michael Lewis is also a very very funny guy. There are a lot of funny stories in there about what happens on the trading floors on Wall Street.

Read the Big Short by same author and loved it, so read this one. Unlike Big Short, it helps if you have a bit of a financial background, but not required. I was in high school during the years described in the book, and remember a bit, but this gives a great explanation of what happened and even foreshadows some themes that caused the 2007 crash.

I had to read this book for my Business Ethics class and write a paper. This is a must read book. As a graduate I can see a lot of the scenarios that took place in the book happening in real life within most industries outside of finance. If nothing else this book will make you take a look at yourself in respect to where you are in life / career; either you need to step up your game or stop being blind to the overly crazy things that you let happen in your life. Great read and very funny to say the least!

About the author

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 family.