The Money Culture

by Michael Lewis

Overview

The classic warts-and-all portrait of the 1980s financial scene.

The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of '29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393338652
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/14/2011
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	448,051
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

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.

Date of Birth:

October 15, 1960

Place of Birth:

New Orleans, LA

Education:

Princeton University, B.A. in Art History, 1982; London School of Economics, 1985

Table of Contents

Introduction xiii

Part I New World 1

Christmas on Wall Street 5

Leave Home Without It: The Absurdity of the American Express Card 11

Eddie the Chop House Boy 21

Bulldog Bull 39

Mary Cunningham, Meet Ward Cleaver 47

Franky's Longest Mile 55

Leveraged Rip-Off 63

Ski Lift Tiff 73

Barbarians at the Trough 79

The Mystery of the Disappearing Employees 87

Mr. Wall Street Goes to Washington 95

How Wall Street Took the S & Ls for a Ride 103

When Bad Things Happen to Rich People 111

People in Glass Penthouses... 119

Milken's Morals and Ours 127

Horatio Alger Trumped 133

Taken for a Ride on the Customer's Yacht 141

Part II Old World 163

"Do You Have a Fire in Your Belly?" 167

Les Golden Boys 173

Don't Cry for Me Guacamole 181

Portrait of the American as a Bond Salesman 187

What the British Can Learn from American History 193

Slicing Up Europe for Fun and Profit 199

Part III Other World 207

How a Tokyo Earthquake Could Devastate Wall Street 211

The New York Investment Banker Abroad 233

Japanese Takeout 243

Pickens' Lickin' 249

Kamikaze Capitalism 255

The Japanese Art Bubble 263

A Wall Street Yankee in the Imperial Court 271

Acknowledgments 279

Where and When They First Appeared 281

Editorial Reviews

The funniest and most trenchant commentator on the money-mad moguls reshaping our world today.

USA Today

Journalism of a high order…Lewis's insouciance is one of his great charms as a writer, along with a graceful prose style, a mordant wit, and a thorough grounding in the world of finance…One of those rare works that encapsulate and define an era.

Fortune

One of our most entertaining writers…The Money Culture rivals Liar's Poker in giggle-inspiring quality.”

BusinessWeek

Lewis wrote a very funny and trenchant book about life as a junior bond trader on Wall Street in the mid-1980s and called it Liar's Poker ( LJ 9/1/89). In this new book, he revisits familiar ground. In essays and pieces that originally appeared in magazines and newspapers, he strolls down Wall Street and takes aim at such targets as Michael Milken, the RJR Nabisco takeover, Louis Rukeyser, the Savings & Loan crisis, the Japanese, etc., and dissects them. There is not much in the way of true revelation here, but, with Lewis's puckish humor and inimitable writing style, the stories are entertaining and thought-provoking. And he proves that ``the raw itch for money is still with us as surely as ever . . . and the money on Wall Street is better than elsewhere.'' This should be a big hit with the readers of his previous book. For all popular nonfiction collections.-- Richard Drezen, Merrill Lynch Lib., New York

Library Journal