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

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I worked for CSFB for three years, and am still in investment banking for a smaller firm. So I have seen a part of the world that is described here. I'm not saying that this is an exact description of what I saw, because Lewis picks the most exotic creatures that he met, but the atmosphere is perfectly conveyed. This book will tell you all the stuff that they don't teach you in an interview or recruitment visit - the pecking order, the politics, and how to get paid.

The other reason to read this is that Lewis is a brilliant writer, with a real talent for describing people and their situations. Lots of other people have written boring books with the same raw material. For a non-specialist like my mother, the technicalities were hard work, but you don't need a lot of special knowledge to like this book. My mother certainly did.

Probably the best way to look at this book is like a travel book - you're not visiting a country, you're visiting a world. Great travel books are not word-perfect descriptions of a place, they are representations of what the author felt like when he was there, and they give the reader a feeling of what it was like to be there. If you read this book, you will understand what it feels like to work inside a big bank, and you'll enjoy the ride, even if you have no interest in actually working there.

**** I read this book in my last undergraduate year of college. At that time, Lewis provided me with an eye-opening, first-hand glance of life in the high-flying world of finance (1980's) and the personalities that drove that period forward. It was relevant reading material since I was intending to pursue a career in the financial services industry, and here was a book written by a former bond salesman in the New York and London offices of Salomon Brothers. **** Nevertheless, this book is not limited to only those interested or involved in the world of business. This book is for anybody who is curious how the S&L crisis emerged; how the Reagan administration's deregulations affected the salaries of a select few in the US financial industry; how much the tax burden of the average American citizen grew as a result. This book is perfect for those who dislike the dry writing found in historical textbooks. **** Lewis's anecdotes will leave you in stitches! I am now working in the financial services industry. Most of the people I run into seem to have read this book at an earlier age and most enjoyed it as much as I did. **NOTE** Other "financial history" books that could be compared to "Liar's Poker", but written with very different writing styles: "Merchants of Debt" by George Anders; "Barbarians at the Gate".

What a great read. A friend of mine recommended this to me and I can say that it certainly was a refreshing read.

This book tells you about some of the influential people who shaped Salomon Brothers and Wall St in the eighties. I never realised the history that went with Salomon Brothers.

The style is great and I can really identify with the author's early years going through the stages of obtaining and starting a job. Some of the characters in the book are hilarious, you can only just believe they are real.

Only one complaint: sometimes the author goes on for quite a long time with his history e.g. the history of junk bonds and the history of various people in SB. I only wish that there was more about the author's story.

Only one gripe though, and it can't prevent this from being a 5 star book.

Buy it now! Thanks to the book, I am now constantly searching for books like this but this is the only one I have found recounting the story of a salesman as opposed to a trader.

... that Mr. Lewis describes, and worked for the fixed income trading desk, so I know for a fact most of his descriptions are pure fiction. As for the rest, he has taken three years of events, embellished and exaggerated them, and presented them as if they occurred in a single day, creating an image of out-of-control mayhem in the company.

Mr. Lewis is a mediocre writer at best, lacking in financial expertise, and interested solely in pulp gossips and self-promotion. If you wish to read an actually well-written book on Wall Street, read "Barbarians at the Gate", "Market Wizards" or "Money Machine" - skip this trash.

In Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis writes about his journey in becoming a bond salesman and his two years of work experiences at Salomon Brothers. While the book does offer some information about the finacial innovations driving the bond business in the 1980s, I think the principle thrust of the book is an examination of the culture and the personalities of Wall Street trading desks. The first chapter story, which is the basis for the title of the book, involving John Gutfreund and John Meriwether encapsulates the nature of this world.

This book is an important read for anyone who thinks they might want to become a trader/salesperson on Wall Street. If not, it is still a very interesting peek into a world that most people do not understand.

My last comment is a minor criticism of Michael Lewis. Lewis writes in the first person and is obviously a very self-involved individual with an extremely high opinion of himself. This is more evident in his later writings and columns for various periodicals (e.g. his NY Times article on Long-Term Capital was sickening). Despite this criticism the book is still very enjoyable.

For those of us that have an innate disbelief for brokers, traders, advisors and the likes working from Wall Street, this is a must read. For those of you who take lessons and advise from financial advisors, money experts, radio and TV charlatans, this book should be mandatory.

The basic premise (mine, not the Author) is, why someone who knows what will go up or down, will share that with me? By a simple rule of supply and demand (and its effect in price), when more people find out about a `good deal', the `less good' the deal becomes. I.e. the fewer people that `know' that a commodity will go up in value, the better, as the demand for that commodity remains low. The more people that find out about this commodity (stock, bond, investment, metal, etc.) the demand will rise and so will the price. Why will someone that `knows' what will improve in price, share that with you? If your advisor really knew, he/she would not be wasting their time telling you about it, they would gobble up on that commodity, spend all they have to buy more, and then borrow some more. Then the opposite is also true: once he/she accumulated as much as possible of such commodity, then they would have a credible and legitimate reason to `spread the knowledge', so people would start buying and he/she can sell... and the price will go down!

The only reservation which would oppose this logic is that the large and prestigious Wall Street bankers, with such tall buildings and important names, century old reputation, so much marble, granite and stainless steel, etc. `have' to be ethical, professional and give you a good service for your money. They can't be a sham; or can they? Introducing Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker. This is a book that is hard to put down. For a person like me, not very familiar with the doings of the stock market, banks, etc. this is extraordinarily revealing. What an education! This book should be required reading in any MBA program.

The books is very entertaining and easy reading, Lewis' style is fun. There are some stories so amusing that I had to put the book aside until finished laughing. Constant references are made to true names, places and newpaper articles at the time of the events described. All this gives it the color of truth. I `googled' the Author and the book, and could not find a single article refuting any part of this book. Given the fame achieved by being listed as a # 1 bestseller in the New York Times, if someone had something to say, I am sure we would know by know.

I happen to have a neighbor who worked as a stock broker for a decade or so. To my questions, especially to why he quit (he is still young and not a millionaire), he just handed me his copy of this book. He only added `there is a dark underbelly to trading'. And was he right!

This book shows, from the inside, the inner workings of the famous, prestigious and powerful Wall Street banks. Nothing sugarcoated, the plain truth. I read the last 20 pages very slowly because I did not want the book to end.

In the 1980's, Michael Lewis was a neophyte bond salesman for Salomon Brothers in New York and London for four years. Liar's Poker is a high-stakes game the traders, salesmen, and executives play each afternoon, but it is also a metaphor for the Salomon culture of extreme risk-taking with immediate payoffs and clear winners and losers.

This is the story of how Lewis survived the training program, inept but mean-spirited management, an aborted take-over even featuring a white knight, layoffs and the 1987 market crash before quitting to find his real calling as a business journalist. While Lewis's career did not take off quickly, he eventually became a highly paid producer, although not in the league of the true top dogs.

Lewis tells the real story of Wall Street in both go-go and crash days with self-deprecating humor enlivened with his ecletic wit. Colorful and well-known Wall Street characters appear such as Michael Milken, Lazlo Birini, Warren Buffett, Bill Simon, Sr. and John Guetfruend. All business students need to read this as even those with advanced degrees in finance such as myself, will learn how things really work. The story of how the junk bond and collateralized mortgage backed security markets emerge is told to fill in a chapter in financial history. Perhaps most interesting is some of the political machinations, rampant at Salomon, which lead for example for Salomon to ignore the junk bond market, allowing others to flourish and eventually attempt to take-over Salomon using junk bonds.

Lewis also describes for all investors the conflicts of interest and lack of governance on Wall Street long before Eliot Spitzer and Arthur Levitt became the champions of the little guy. My next step is to read Lewis's later books.

A well-written book that exposes the "Money-is-God" attitude of Wall Street. From the profane, fat, slovenly, polyester-wearing traders that stuff their mouths all day long, to the frat-boy Ivy League trainees who heave paper-wads at the Salomon directors speaking in the training classes, one gets a highly accurate picture of the inside of a Wall Street investment banking firm.

I was particularly amused by two anecdotes; the author had his first encounter with Salomon Brothers when he was seated next to the wife of a Salomon director at a St. James Palace dinner hosted by the Queen Mother. Of course, as close as she would get to the guests would be to stroll out of the room followed by her trained Corgi dogs who genuflect every 15 seconds. Perhaps insulted by the Queen Mother's indifference at her presence, the director's wife shouted out, "Hey Queen, nice dogs you have there!" after she passed. The second amusing anecdote occurs when the author is interviewed several times but not offered a job. Eventually a friend tells him that Salomon does not actually offer someone a job. Consequently, the author calls up the firm and says, "I accept the position", upon which he is welcomed as a new member of Salomon Brothers.

The book also exposes the dirty little secret that Wall Street makes its money by entering into adversarial relationships with their clients. The author refers to this as "taking the other side of the fool". Specifically, Wall Street attempts to keep spreads on securities artificially wide in order to pocket that spread, for which they were ultimately busted by the SEC and heavily fined. They also hype stocks that they know are garbage because they have investment banking relationships with those companies (Merrill Lynch was just busted for this by the state of New York and heavily fined). Also, the investment banking fees they charge their clients to raise capital are grossly excessive, but their clients are too naive to understand this, or perhaps more accurately do not even care.

Ultimately, the decline of the company that is chronicled in the book provides the following insight; even though Salomon always tried to hire the best and the brightest, this "talent" was eventually negated by the incompetence that arises from any hierarchical organization. That is to say, the brilliance of the few is always neutralized by the incompetence of the many inherent in the corporate structure.

Liars' Poker is the quintessential business novel. Everyone businessman I know has either read it or heard of it. So, I decided that I should check it out.

This book is an account of Michael Lewis' time at Salomon Smith Barney in the mid 80s, at the height of the junk bond craze. He perfectly describes the atmosphere of competitiveness and the vast rewards everyone was reaping as a result of the boom.

What came as a surprise to me is that Lewis describes the mortgage bond market, an obtuse and vague instrument, very clearly and in a way most non-business people could also understand. This explanation also serves to show why these junk bonds ultimately collapsed.

Then, of course, are his hilarious descriptions of his orientation, his bosses and coworkers. To read about these outlandish characters is worth the price of the book alone.

So, to close, this book is a classic for a reason. It is informative and well written, but manages to be hilarious at the same time, a feat few authors can achieve. Read this book at all costs.

Somehow Michael Lewis went from Art History major at Princeton to investment banker with Salomon Brothers. In this book he shows that he understood what these markets are all about, in a way that eludes the grasp of people who may spend years majoring in finance, going to law school or business school and slaving away in these same markets without a clue as to how the whole thing hangs together.

Using bond trading theory to trade whole companies and industries, as Lewis explains Michael Milken, is especially helpful, and it suggests that Warren Buffett is doing the same thing--buying companies by acting as a "preferred" lender.

The "us v. them" relationship between an investment bank and its customers was interesting, and in our current market times, I see a lot of this in how financial planners do the same kind of petty ripoffs that Lewis describes using bigger dollars and bigger customers. It's possible that today's minor aspiring financial planner types could read this book and aspire to be an even bigger malefactor of great wealth. It's refreshing that Lewis bailed out of the business, and this book stands the test of time as a continuing accurate diagnosis of the problems with sinners running markets. The trouble is , there will never be anyone else to run them.

At the end of the book, he seems to have a weakness for praising John Meriwether. Isn't that the guy who lost a huge sum of money in the recent "Long Term Capital" hedging disaster? Even that proves the point of this book, which is that none of these guys care at all about anything but the dollars to be made in front of their nose at the moment. Exactly as Adam Smith said.

*
This book is for everybody. Even if you've never worked in finance in your life, you will still think it's funny and entertaining. Besides which, you will get a thorough education on the bond market and its growth in the mid eighties.

Since this was one of the books often referred to by MBA programmes, I was hesitant at first to read it (one of my pet hates is all those silly books about "how to" from supposed "experts" who have since lost all their money or credibility because they were too greedy or didn't see change coming - which is why they had to write the book). Yet, I found myself in need of literature one day and spotted the distinctive yellow cover (in Singapore at least). I was attracted immediately by the title and then proceeded to read the first paragraph. I almost sat down promptly on the floor to keep reading it - a good sign that this was good reading.

Lewis has a talent for story telling. He combines this talent with an uncanny ability to be able to explain a very complex market in a very simple way. The "pull" of this story is that you KNOW it really happened. It is easy to cast your mind in the author's shoes, and BE on the trading floor with him. You can feel the excitement when the market turns, taste the sweat of other traders, hear the noise of the commotion on the 42nd floor, and sense the tense environment created by several hundred people in one area all trying to make a quick buck.

The story begins by an explanation of the game "Liar's Poker" itself. From then on, the gambling begins and the dice continue to roll ... the very bizarre way in which Michael gets a much sought after position at a prestigious investment bank ... to an intriguing story about the movers and shakers at Salomon Brothers, and the company's inevitable downfall.

Pseudonyms, of course, are used. But we can all imagine what "the Human Piranha" looks like and certainly know what type of person this is. Women can despise the competitiveness and prejudice that reaches its ultimate point in this type of environment, and is practised only by men, for men.

The book tails off a little at the end. The author (rightly) describes how his career takes off with the company and his inevitable resignation from the firm (Michael, I'm totally with you -- it takes a certain type of person, without scrupples or morals to be able to sustain themselves in this type of workplace).

The only slight weakness is that the author tries to justify his choice at the end (there's no need to, because we understand why early on), by saying "money isn't everything". Sure, it is not everything, but it's a lot to those who haven't got any.

*

Liar's Poker is a funny look at life on Wall Street; especially the life of lower-level employees getting their start in the financial world. Michael Lewis uses the personal experience of his financial career in the Salomon Brothers bond program to tell the larger story of the rise and fall of the entire firm during the 1980s. Along the way he tells some funny stories and gives the reader an interesting, inside look at the fast-paced life on Wall Street. But in the end, the book starts to drag and Lewis's cynical view of the securities industry begins to get tiresome. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know what a trader's life is like inside a major Wall Street firm. It is an interesting, initially humorous read that is appropriately not much longer than 200 pages in length.

I have read a lot of 'insider' accounts of high finance and I am amazed by how much they all seem to owe Michael Lewis for writing "Liar's Poker." From "Monkey Business" to works of fiction like "All I Could Get" to even movies such as "Boiler Room," all of them seem to have borrowed heavily from Lairs Poker.

In this book Lewis tells the story of Solomon Brothers from its ascendancy from a small bond trading house, to the world's most profitable corporation to it's decline and eventual reorganization.

Lewis narrates his story from the perspective he had as a Solomon bond salesman in the mid 1980's. This book shows off two of Michael Lewis best talents:

1.) The ability to covey the feeling of how it was while he was there.
2) The ability to write about events/activities in the past (or halfway around the world) AS IF HE WERE THERE.

In this book, Lewis is a witness, a critic and a historian all at the same time and in comes together well. Reading this book, I kept think that Michael Lewis is too observant, insightful, and people-oriented to stay on Wall St. Maybe deciding to write this book, getting himself out of Solomon while getting back at his superiors, was just another smart trade.

Maybe someday I'll read another `insider' account book that will blow me way, but for now "Liar's Poker" is the gold standard for the genre.

I want you to realize that Michael Lewis is only one perspective albeit a very biased and skewed one at that. If you speak to any one who worked at Salomon they will bluntly tell you that the book is not completely factual. Michael Lewis has an agenda, and it is very obvious that he has it in for the Salomon and Wall Street traders. And, he is willing to bend the truth and exagerate things to make the people look like monsters. Using the endearing term of Human Pirhana speaks to this point. I loved the book, because it gives you somewhat of a perspective on the life of traders, but I don't think you truly know what it is you're up against until you go and do actual trading. I wouldn't believe everything you read in Liar's Poker, and I would weigh each word carefully, because Meriweather isn't the only playing Liar's Poker here. Enjoy, and don't let the book discourage you from hedge funds and investment banking, especially if you really love finance.

Probably, I misunderstood that I would learn something from this book about finance or markets in general and would be able to use these ideas to add to the bottom line - make more MONEY. But it seemed like my goal behind reading this (or any other) book was too clearly defined and this book did not help at all. If you have too much time, nothing to do, and are looking for something to pass time then read this. But if you want to achieve something such as gaining insight into trading, selecting, analyzing stocks or securities etc then do not waste your time. This book has no direction, no substance, and not much to learn from it which can be used to produce results.

...

In short, reading Michael Lewis' account of his tumultuous two-year stint at Salomon Brothers in the mid-1980s delivers all the pleasure and enjoyment of reading good pulp fiction. Lewis is -- much to my surprise, I must admit -- an extremely talented writer with a gift for metaphor and the art of character description and analysis.

One of the endearing things about this book, I think, is that it is laced with a certain self-deprecating tone. Lewis' basic thesis (although I don't think he really believes it) is that the the most glaring sign of Salomon's impending demise was that it started hiring people such as himself. Despite many self-effacing comments, however, Lewis points out repeatedly that he was the highest paid -- and thus best producing -- young bond salesman at Salomon during his tenure and seeks to assure the reader that he isn't some scorned ex-employee who couldn't hack the perils of life on the trading floor.

Lewis dedicates a few chapters to explaining the rise of the mortgage trading desk at Salomon and the junk bond market under Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham, although neither have much to do with Lewis' career as a government bond salesman in Salomon's London Office. Did the author think this gave proper perspective and background to the telling of his personal story or was it an effort to pad out an already short piece of work? Probably a bit of both, is my guess.

In sum, if you approach this book (as I did) as a roman a clef, with all the exaggerations and artistic license associated with fiction, rather than a legitimate memoir, you'll probably get a lot more enjoyment out of it. It is funny, fast-paced, often incredible -- and will quickly expunge any thoughts you once had of being an investment banker, no matter how high the salaries might be.

I have read a good number of books covering Wall Street in the 80's and I really think there are better books out there, Den of Thief's, Predators Ball. This book is entertaining, well written, and gives us a view we normally do not have, the traders. With the movies Boiler Room and Rogue Trader, you can see that they take from this book. I think the best part of the book is the behind the scenes, almost sub plot story of Salomon Brothers and Wall Street in the eighties.
The down side for me is that this book really just focuses on a small part of the whole 80's Wall Street, Junk Bond and M&A world. I would have liked him to have tried to captures so of the other things going on in his business t the same time and try and relate them to what he was doing. The ending is also about 10 pages too long. Overall this is an average book.

You can neglect all the reviews and go straightly to any local bookstore to read the first chapter which describes the game "Liar's Poker". You will buy it then, I bet. It's not a trading book which I had expected, but a true story told by a bond salesman in Salomon Brothers about how bankers "stole" or sometimes "robbed" investors shamelessly. Though I still found two chapters quite boring, the rest are really interesting. Even you may not like the story, you will learn to be more careful when your private or personal banker calls you for a deal or two! Finally, I must agree with Management Today's comment that it "Should be made a legally required component of every MBA course".

Though Liar's Poker was written roughly a decade ago and Wall Street has changed somewhat since then, it is still a humorous and pertinent read. Lewis' prose flows well and pauses occasionally to bring his reader historically up to date. As a memoir, it is the only one I've found that truly takes you into the mind and life of a Wall Street trader. Perhaps it is time for someone to write about the late 90's equivalent of the hotshot Lewis...the Wall Street Research Analyst.

The book is hilarious. It's still one of my favorite gifts for friends in school or starting out in the business. Some people don't like the middle of the book, which is a bit of a history lesson. But the history lesson is a good one and should be be compared to in the industry today for those who are in the business. The beginning and the end are hilarious

I read the comments of both the customers and critics and was excited when the book arived at my home. Then, after reading the book, I re-read the comments to see to see if they were perhaps talking about the same book I read. This was pure drivel. Read the back cover on the book...then multiply that drivel by 250 pages.

This is a great book. A home run. While I am not an industry insider, I did read it while I was getting an MBA from the Michigan Business School and enjoyed it a great deal. It provided a great deal of background to what I was learning in various finance classes. Mr. Lewis helped me see the people who make these markets work and move and that it isn't faceless formulas free of emotion finding perfect prices; rather it is ambitious men (and women) ferociously and sometimes crazily pursuing their own financial interests.

The book is amazingly funny without being slapstick. There are some amazing images - not only the Meriwether games of Liar's Poker, but the food being delivered to the physically rotund mortgage bond traders, the bond trader who felt like the price would rise and then kept buying billions of dollars in bonds to prove himself right. I loved reading about the training he received and what he was taught about selling bonds and how those folks really do view their customers. Some of the institutional stuff is a bit dated (but still valuable as history), but the human stuff still rings fresh and true because people and still, well, whatever it was they were back then.

If you just want an entertaining read - read this book. If you want to read about the early go-go years in the bond trading and the pre-boom boom years on Wall Street - read this book. If you want to learn about some of the big names in finance and what they did - read this book. You get the idea. I am saying you should read this book and you will be glad you did. Really.

Last summer I worked on Wall Street for Goldman Sachs (the Salomom Brothers of the 90's). Going to NYC I expected to find the phone throwing backstabbing, disrespectful jerks in the book. What I did find was 90hr 6 days work weeks. The traders and salesmen were highly intense, intelligent, and most of all stressed. I did come across a few traders who still had the same mentality of the traders in the book. However, most of the "Liars Poker" types Wall Streeters have left. I actually met about three people in the book including Mike Mortara now head of fixed income @ Goldman.

My advice read this book. But, even after reading this book if you want a Wall Street career be prepared to give up you life and sleep.

...you can waste your time and save your money by checking this out of your local library.

If you want to get an "inside view" of the inner workings of Wall Street during the excessive gyrations of the '80s, then read Den of Theives - that book is well written and well worth the money!

What turned me off about this book was the structure and the writing style. The first half of the book was essentially the author relating fortuitous circumstances that were the product of Serendipity. He was simply in the right place at the right time, had virutally no idea how he got there, felt out of place the whole time (even when he was raking in the Big Bucks in NY and London), and so now he thought he'd wwrite a book about it. I also got the sense that he was trying to assuage some guilt from his association at Salomon Brothers. He was there, he made a lot of money, good for him - get over it!

I was also pretty disappointed because the subject matter has A LOT more potential. I might have actually enjoyed it - had I not read Den of Theives 7 years earlier, and already had some idea of how things took place. But, if you can get it for $5 or less (including shipping), and you have little to no knowledge of what an investment banker's life is like (and you haven't also seen the movie Wall Street (which covers the same highlights in this book)), then it's probably worth it.

I did like the wrap up he did towards the end of the book, relating where he had heard everyone from the firm ended up...althought that seemed a little rushed...

Liar's Poker takes the reader through the Go-Go era of Wall Street in the 80s, where banks expanded rapidly and ethics seemed to take second priority to making piles of money. (The more things change, the more they stay the same)

Three big stories are at play here. First is the creation of the Mortgage Backed Securities business at Solomon. Creating this market generated a ton of money on the street, and also highlighted both the challenges and gains from creating a new business from scratch. It also demonstrated the knives pulled out in both stopping a new business from starting, and then fighting for scraps of credit.

The second story is of junk bonds - a vehicle initially created to fund less creditworthy companies, but eventually used to finance corporate takeovers. This is the Michael Milken Drexel Burnham story. This was the other major move of finance in the 1980s, though in reality junk bonds are not as awful as the hype surrounding them. (Providing financing to less creditworthy companies is still a very valuable activity, and many funds did very well on this.)

The third story, and perhaps the most important, covers the conflict of interest between banks and their customers. Many banks, traders and salesmen take their customers long term best interest to heart. This is not neccessarily a given, and Lewis highlights his own experience in trying to walk the line.

Liar's Poker has earned it's place as required reading for all moving to Wall Street. It should also be required reading for investors.

While Lewis does a fine job as he writes a personal memoir of his time at Solomon Brothers in the mid-1980's, he soon loses focus of his main storyline. Lewis wanders off for three chapters to describe the creation of a home mortgage market and the personalities involved. It is as if Lewis or his editor suddenly decided that the amusing anecdotes of life on Wall Street were fine pulp, but needed to be framed in the context of historical substence in order for the book to be seen as respectable. (Ironically, Lewis's account of the rise to power of Michael Milken is more gripping, perhaps because Lewis was more directly affected by Milken's ambitions.) The evolution of equities as an investment is ignored almost completely, leaving the reader to wonder how, in the span of two years or so, the equities department of Solomon Brothers could go from "powerless" to surviving the layoffs started days before the crash of '87 to being the reason Solomon Brothers had its worst year in history. The author is inconsistent in his granting of pseudonyms or anonymity, naming a great many employees by name while protecting a chosen few. All in all, Liar's Poker is a quick, sometimes amusing account of Lewis's time at Solomon Brothers, but little more.

Michael Lewis knows how to tell some nice anecdotes about life on Wall Street, but after the first 20 pages, it's largely a tale of the stresses of bond trading. He does go into some detail about how the deregulations of the 1980's allowed for many interesting types of trading, but it remains largely dull for the rest of the book.

If you're looking to be entertained, a better book about Wall Street would be Bombardiers by Po Bronson. After reading both books, it's very obvious that Bronson was heavily influenced by Liar's Poker, but by being pure fiction, allows for more interesting and sympathetic characters and is far funnier.

Unlike (nearly all, or all) academic economics books, which 'explain' that arbitrage does not and cannot exist, Lewis explains to us how the big bond houses live from arbitrage (buying low from the government or somewhere else and selling a bit higher to you and me). The book is a rare, a highly entertaining and very informative jewel: Lewis rightfully and poetically calls brokerage houses 'full servive casinos', far better than Monte Carlo or Las Vegas. Not only will they accept and place your bets, they'll also lend you (a large fraction of) the money needed to place your bets (margin)! A very good book to read now (1/27/00) during the 'wild ride' before the present big market bubble goes: POP!

Unfortunately, Lewis tells us too litlte about Meriwether, who later seduced two of the top finance academics (they were willing) and, with their aid, constructed the huge, uncontrolled experiment in 'equilibrium theory' called 'Long Term Capital Management' (LTCM). Their philosophy, also believed uncritically by most working economists, was and likely still is: Equilibrium will prevail (even in the absence of restoring forces!). For the continuation of the story where Liar's poker leaves off ('portfolio insurance', arbitrage and more arbitrage, and the formation and collapse of the bubble called LTCM), see the new book "Inventing Money".

As an analyst on Wall Street (yes, I do make a lot of copies) I must confess this was insightful reading even for me. If you want to work on Wall Street or you want to know what your broker really thinks of you, read this book. But to update the epilogue a bit, I temped at Salomon in 7 World Trade while waiting for my current job to begin. Much has changed. Real efforts have been made to combat the sexism in the system, though far more than mere vestiges remain. Each morning in the final months of the merger with Smith Barney pink slips were handed out and the process was very judiciously calculated. The pall of this book hung over each lay off. So be assured, if you have not read Liar's Poker, you are not culturally literate on Wall Street.

One final word: The Market is Efficient! Only the investment banks made money on the buyouts of the 80s. With Liar's Poker in one hand and A Random Walk Down Wall Street in the other, you'll have the basic insights to manage your relationship with both your broker and the market.

This book should be required reading for all wanna be I-bankers. The author very convincingly describes the inner workings of a major financial institution. From the outside, the public only sees the expensive suits and tall glass buildings and are suitably impressed by the knowledge and skills of those who works inside. But the author takes us behind the doors to show frighteningly how the lifeblood of the world is controlled by a bunch of 25 year olds who have little idea of the magnitude of their actions.

Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker is a must read for anyone trying to understand the 2008 crisis in mortgage lending and home ownership. In fact, a new edition of the book should be published with a forward by Ben Bernake or Hank Paulson. The autobiography describes a mid-1980's newbie to Wall Street and his induction into the fraternity of mortgage traders at Salomon Brothers and junk bond traders at Drexel. This book rises above a rite of passage story because of the financial chaos which happened during the next three decades.

The 41st trading floor of Salomon Brothers is where millions of dollars exchange hands in minutes. There is a blue collar culture of practical jokes, profanity, Mexican food and pizza. The characters might have come right out of Damon Runyon or Animal House. The main difference between the interns, the traders and the clerks is neither their demeanor nor education but their wealth. In contrast to other books which tell us about the best and the brightest, this book describes ordinary people with excess body fat, perspiration, greed and wealth.

As more homeowners face foreclosure and the US dollar loses value, it is not clear what message to derive from this book. Were it not for these failures of economic policy the book would join other interesting stories about the rich and privileged of Wall Street. But because of this failure of oversight, the book takes us from humor to cynicism and from a sense of national pride to a feeling of national shame.

Is there a ratio of capitalistic reward to risk which is unconscionable in a democratic society? Can this behavior be limited or controlled by financial transparency, tax code, money supply and credit leverage? How do we avoid these consequences of the creation and destruction of capital without moving down the path of socialism? Can we ever put to rest the saying that behind every great fortune is a great crime?

This is a great book. I mean, everyone else says so, so they can't be wrong. Yes, I want a job on wall street.

LIAR's POKER by Michael Lewis is an interesting exploration of the excesses of investment banking, trading in the 1980s. The author's many anecdotes throughout the book are often fairly amusing, particularly his description of mortgage traders as well as the students who sat in the back row of his Salomon Brothers training class. More importantly, however, the book covers many important themes. I believe the book actually has something to teach the reader about mismanagement and the consequences of office politics. Furthermore, the nature of the broker is exposed insofar as his relationship to his employer and his client are concerned. That is, the broker will ultimately serve his employer at the expense of his client when necessary.


I recommend this book not only for amusement and insight on the go-go 1980s trading years, but also for the reader to pick-up on some of the themes of management, the impact of office politics, and the history of investment banking and trading.

Sell your soul and buy this book with the change! I read this book -several times- a good few years back and having just picked up a new copy and finished it in one go, it is still a classic read after all these years. Lewis's behind the scenes peek at Wall Street's 'Greed is Good' mentality of Salomon's bond dealers in the 1980's is a book that gets a hook in you from the very start. People still talk about Liar's Poker after a decade, it's that good. Read it and believe it.

Liar's Poker, written by Michael Lewis, describes life on Wall Street during the 1980's and the four years the author worked for Salomon Brothers. Lewis discusses the evolution of the bond market, how mortgaged-backed securities came to exist, and the misfortunes of missing the junk bond market. The fantastic character portrayals are absolutely hilarious and they make the book come to life. Liar's Poker depicts many business ethics issues such as gender and race discrimination, consumer and investor protection, and hostile work environments.

Lewis begins by describing John Gutfreund, Chairman of Salomon, and the Liar's Poker game. Gutfreund is portrayed as a manager that was both feared and respected. He was once a trader and managed Salomon with a trader mentality. Traders by nature are gamblers, so they are willing to take bets, or better yet, they are risk takers. Gutfreund apparently loved playing the game, Liar's Poker, because if a person was good at it, he was probably a good trader as well. The game is played predominantly by Salomon traders whereby a group gathers in a circle holding a dollar bill close to the body to hide the serial numbers. One player begins by making a bid such as "three fives," which means that all the players in the circle have at least three fives in their serial number. The player to the left can either challenge the bid or up the bid by saying three sixes or four fives. Only in a challenge do the players reveal the serial numbers on the bill. Essentially, it is game that rewards players for their ability to bluff or deceive the other players. Lewis uses the game to illustrate Salomon's corporate culture and its leadership.

Liar's Poker does a fantastic job explaining how the mortgage trading business originated and how Salomon/Ranieri created mortgaged-backed securities. Lewis also details more stories about his escapades after the training program. The book is easy and fun to read because it is presents an accurate picture of Wall Street firms. Business ethics issues are presented through the text. The issues that are identified in this report are sexual and ethnic discrimination, hostile work environments, and unethical business practices. Many more ethical issues are present in the Liar's Poker. This book should be read by anyone hoping to join a Wall Street firm or simply a trading environment.

When you were young, your parents probably instilled you with a respect for adults. Michael Lewis performs a public service by showing that adults don't always deserve this respect, and sometimes even behave worse than children. Indeed, as Michael puts it, Wall Street is a vast playground where corporate executives can be bullies and rob people of their lunch money.

The truth is that young people accepting their first job on Wallstreet probably have no idea what they're getting into. After four years in the meritocrasy that is academia, most college students are unprepared for the brutal darwinian slugfest that awaits. College professors do not offer instruction on how to deal with abusive managers, back-stabbing coworkers, and double-talking executives. New hires (i.e. geeks) are beaten and kicked until they either learn how to fight or perish. Life is cheap on Wallstreet.

This book is a definitve recount of the madness which typified the 1980s. Michael lets us rid shotgun with him on his journey through the capital markets. Along the way, we meet strange indigenous animals like the Human Piranha, Sangfroid, and Dash Riprock. We learn the native language (i.e. f---speak) and observe a tribe of bond traders engaged in ritualistic gluttony. Michael does not try to shield our eyes. Rather, he provides the reader with an uncensored look at Salomon Brothers and life in the trenches.

Michael's sketch of John Gutfruend, Salomon's then CEO, is both droll and insightful. In so many words, Gutfruend was a king without clothes. He smoked cigars and affected a british accent to convey the image of an English gentleman. He worked very hard to give the impression that money was secondary to the "contributions" that Salomon made to the business community. Yet, the minute that Gutfruend ascended to the throne he initiated an IPO that would both line his own pockets and enrage the founders. Gutfruend was also responsible for a number of disasterous mistakes, like trying to open an office in London in an effort to become an international bank. By the end of the book, there is no doubt that Gutfruend is naked.

If there is a message to Liar's Poker, it's that finance is a zero-sum game. What this implies is that your broker is not necessarily looking out for your best interests; he may be looking out for his own. As the E*trade commercial so aptly put it, "if you're broker is so smart, why does he work for a living?"

Reading Liar's Poker today confirms its status as a modern classic about Wall Street. Michael Lewis depicts the boom years at Salomon Brothers in the mid-1980's with a style that is simultaneously sharp and laugh-out-loud hilarious.

As a complete outsider to Wall Street, I enjoyed the opportunity to get this insider's perspective on the culture of investment banking. Lewis cleverly combines his personal narrative of getting hired, going through the training program, and landing a job as a bond salesman in Salomon's soon-to-overheat London office with a more objective recounting of the key figures and episodes that led to Salomon's downfall.

Lewis's most colorful portraits are of Lewie Renieri, the man who practically invented the mortgage bond market, and Michael Milken, the `junk bond king' who made Drexel Burnham into Salomon's toughest competitor. Strangely, Lewis's depiction of John Gutfreund, then chairman of Salomon, is less sharply delineated.

For all the `animal house' behavior going on at Salomon Brothers--and Lewis tells a lot of unforgettable stories from the trading floor--the firm was also making serious financial innovations during that period. Lewis ascribes the faltering of Salomon to John Gutfreund's lack of leadership, especially for not retaining the mortgage traders who had made the firm so wealthy and for dismissing the market in junk bonds during its most profitable stage.

Michael Lewis recounts his experiences at Salomon with a kind of detached irony; he avoids either glorifying the wealth Salomon created or deriding its culture of greed and gluttony. He recognizes that he and his fellow traders were being paid far more than they were contributing to society: "...if social contribution had been the measure, I should have been billed rather than paid at the end of the year." But Lewis does not condemn Wall Street. Ultimately, he suggests that Wall Street functions best when salesmen and traders value long-term relationships over making short-term profits.

I read this because I was required to for (MBA) school. I read the entire book over two weekends; a difficult task for me because of poor reading speed and poor attention span. I generally do not like to read and find most of what I read a painful bore and highly unbeneficial. This book was an exception. This book gives us an interesting insight into Michael Lewis' real world experience, something we cannot get a real feel for in traditional textbooks. If it is not already, this book should be required reading for all MBA programs. Thank you, Mr. Lewis, for sharing your story.

The book is a good read and entertaining for those interested in Wall Street. This book should be required for anyone thinking of getting a job on the Street. Some stories may be hard to understand for readers not familiar with finance terminology.

"Liar's Poker" is a memoir of Michael Lewis' 3 years as a bond salesman for the investment firm Salomon Brothers, Wall Street's premier bond brokerage in the early 1980s. It follows Lewis' career from his serendipitous introduction to the firm, through his initiation as a trainee in 1985, to 1988, while recounting the history of Salomon Brothers' rise to bond dominance and subsequent fall brought on by excesses, poor management, and failure to compete in the junk bond market. Lewis' literate, swiftly paced prose paints a vivid picture of Salomon Brothers' boorish, competitive culture amid the frenzied atmosphere of a rapidly changing late 1980s economy. It shifts effortlessly between trading floor anecdotes and explanations of the mortgage trading department without seeming to digress. Well-written, insightful, and often hysterically funny, "Liar's Poker" is one of those rare Wall Street books that is immensely entertaining -and mostly true. I don't know if someone with no interest in finance would enjoy it, but no knowledge of the bond market in required to understand it. I have heard it said that "Liar's Poker" is accurate in its portrayal of Salomon Brothers but less so in the author's position at the firm. But it hardly matters if the account is somewhat fictionalized. It's just a great read.

Liar's Poker is a personal account of life at Wall Street's most successful firm in the 1980s: Salomon Brothers. The novel follows the wild roller coaster ride that was Salomon Brothers; from their ascension to the top of the mortgage-backed securities market led by the charismatic Lewis Ranieri to their eventual descent into Wall Street mediocrity. The author, Michael Lewis, chronicles his personal experiences starting with Salomon's frat-like trainee program and following his career across the Atlantic to the London offices of Salomon Bros. Along the way he describes the competitive, cut-throat atmosphere of bond trading at Salomon and fills in spaces with a variety of colorful, charismatic characters.

One character that stood out to me was the "father of securitization" Lewis Ranieri. Ranieri, a college dropout, got his start in Salomon Bros mailroom in 1968 and managed, in 10 years, to become the head of their Mortgage department. At the time the rest of Salomon Bros looked down their noses at Ranieri and his blue collared group of mortgage traders. Their department made less money and was comprised of fat, obnoxious, loud traders. Lewis Ranieri personally traversed the country selling the idea of MBS to investors and politicians and ultimately lobbying in Washington D.C. His hardwork paid off as he created a market and made Salomon Brothers hundreds of millions of dollars. His hardwork and success was paid back by Salomon when they fired him in 1987. Such a shame.

Back to the story though...Lewis's retelling of the raucous, juvenile attitudes that purveyed at Salomon is hilarious. Certain portions of the book get a bit too technical when Lewis over-explains stock market intricacies. Unfortunately some parts read like a textbook. I almost put the book down about halfway through due to the boredom I found reading the ins and outs of junk bonds, MBS and other trader jargon.

Thankfully I didn't put the book down. I perservered and was rewarded with an engaging, enjoyable second half of Liar's Poker which focuses on Lewis's evolution from trading floor "geek" to his final status as the ultimate trader, a "Big Swinging Dick." Excellent book whether you're into the stock market or not. Lewis isn't the world's greatest writer, but he certainly gets the job done.

This book is terribly overhyped. Overall, it's a pitifully dry memoir of a man who never made it big on the street.

I would recommend Rolfe & Troob's _Monkey_Business_ over this book.

I you're really into investment banking, or just bond mechanics, don't let the three star rating get you down. I study finance. I liked the book.

I wouldn't say that it is a good book, so much as it is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in a) working on Wall Street (for historical perspective) or b) interested in bonds and, again, their history.

Three stars for the general population. For broker/banker/trader hopefulls, five stars.

I had long heard nothing but great things about "Liar's Poker" but it was not until I found myself in an airport bookstore before a cross-country "red eye" that I decided to read it. It was no disappointment--the book reads like a novel, and Mr. Lewis blends a perfect mixture of sardonic irreverence with a traders' "greed" to land the bull's eye. As someone familiar with bond trading, "Liar's Poker" was still informative and an enjoyable read; and quick too--the entire book was finished by the time my flight landed in LA!

"Liar's Poker" is an insider's view of life at an investment bank. It is written in a cynical tone, with plenty of self-deprecating quips such as "It [end of year bonus] was more than I had contributed to society; Christ, if social contribution had been the measure, I should have been billed rather than paid at the end of the year."

The book portrays Wall Street as a testsoterone driven money making factory. It is OK to gouge the clients as long as it makes money for the firm. In fact, such activities are actively encouraged. The bottom line is always the bottom line. It matters not if you have to crawl over the corpse of your best friend to stab your colleague in the back. If, at the end of the year you made a lot of money for the firm then you were in line for a fat bonus and a round of back slapping from the "Big Swinging Dicks". Wall Street is a fine example of Darwinian forces at work. It is a near pure meritocracy where the strong survive and the weak are swallowed whole.

I found the book highly entertaining. The author is not a professional writer, and this shows in certain sections of the book where the prose is unpolished. Nonetheless, a highly entertaining sojourn into Salomon Brothers and if you have even a passing interest in finance or investment banking, I recommend this as a good read.

This book is hilarious. I didn't think a bond trading floor could be so amusing, but Michael Lewis proved otherwise. Look up a picture of John Gutfreund online before reading the first chapter.

This was a really funny book that also gave me quite an education in investment banking and the world of finance. "Liar's Poker" is very well-written, and keeps things moving. While the subject matter may be complicated, Lewis keeps it comprehensible to those of us who don't have an MBA. It's fascinating to see how the big players work the markets - and in some cases, manipulate them outright. Indeed, "Liar's Poker" gives us a front-row seat to the creation of the mortgage-backed debt obligations that are commonly traded today, and that allowed the current real estate bubble to inflate as large as it has.

Lewis' analysis of Salomon and its problems applies in many respects to professional service firms in general. Having worked in a law firm during the recent boom years, I can say that rapid growth and an abundance of cash can lead to hubris, disorganization, and a loss of core values. Lawyers, accountants, and anyone else who works at a professional service firm will particularly enjoy this book.

This book has received several one-star reviews from persons who apparently either believe it concerns poker card strategies or think that they have hit upon a clever way to promote someone else's books. They are wrong on both accounts. This is an important document from the last financial slump of the late '80s and early '90s describing how stock brokers are given incentives to dump losing stocks on small clients as a way to prop up the returns for their employers' own in-house accounts. Hence, the ability to claim that X bank has been able to achieve a phenomenal return on its own investments--just think what X bank can do for you! Well, thanks to this book, now we know: X bank can unload all of its junk on you and laugh maniacally as your account evaporates. Timely reading for the current financial scandals.

This book is to Wall Street as Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" is to the restaurant business. It's an inside look from someone who not only was there, but lived to write the tale. It's easy to identify with Lewis, who begins his story while he's interviewing for jobs in college. One thing leads to another and he's soon making money and (mis?)-handling millions for his customers and earning the reputation of a "Big Swinging Dick" at Solomon.

Lewis provides great insight into the bond trader's mindset, ranging from the abuse of interns to the creativity required to create a mortgage bond after-market through internal politics and external sales. The traders are continuously glancing at the financial numbers and running "what if" scenarios, imagining the impact on the bond market. The details of the instruments being traded are very well explained, even in financially complex configurations like tranched mortgage liabilities or stripped bonds. Just as much attention to detail is provided in descriptions of the paranoid manic-depressive tendencies of the traders on both the buy and sell sides. Lewis's first "exploding" customer provides a particularly poignant contrast to the equally risky goings on within Solomon.

Lewis really moves the story along. He has a sure hand with dialog and scene setting, and the first person point of view adds to the tension. Thankfully, "Liar's Poker" doesn't get bogged down in psychological or social criticism; there's not even any Monday morning quarter-backing by the author-protagonist. The story is told and the interpretation is pretty much left up to the reader, which I find refreshing.

I also really enjoyed Lewis's tale of Silicon Valley VC through the eyes of Jim Clark, founder of SGI and Netscape, in "The New New Thing". I'm afraid I just wasn't buying Lewis's more recent "Faster", which is much more analytical and much less (auto)biographical.

This book, and Predators Ball, really started the boom in financial writing as it pertains to what it is like to actually work on Wall Street. Having spent 3 years working for 2 different firms in research I can say that some very interesting people work on Wall Street. Some are very average people with phenomenal work ethic whereas some are quite comparable to people out of the Wild West.

Anyone who is considering going into the financial services industry in trading, sales or research should read this. I tell you to read it because it does describe how cut throat the business is and it does provide some entertaining insightful look at characters in the industry. Liar's Poker provides a good top down look at the characters and process of Wall Street. This book, in particular, focuses on the rise of Soloman Brothers and its trading.

Other books of interest would be John Train's Money Masters and New Money Masters (2 different books) that discusses the world's best portfolio managers and traders. Both are excellent reading.

In many ways, it is not clear what sort of book Lewis intends to write. At times, it is a memoir, at times simple gossip, and in others a guide to how the street works. It is a testimony to Lewis' skills as a journalist that he largely succeeds in each of this tasks, giving clear explanations of both the rise of the mortage market and Milken's revolutionary ways with junk bonds, while managing to capture the surprising undercurrents of life in a Wall Street investment firm. It is, needless to say, not pretty -- and Lewis cynically (though honestly, I think) captures the petty interests and conflicts of interest that dominate the trading floor. I am not sure where to put my money now, but I am certainly keeping it away from those banks! There are, however, some unexpected heroes in the book. Lew Raineri's hard charging mortage desk, a bastion of old fashioned ideals (which is itself a good and a bad thing), is portrayed in loving and often hilarious detail, despite the lack of first hand experience, while Michael Milken's junk bond antics are singled out for special appreciation. These choices may seem suspect now -- Raineri's success didn't outlive the competition and Milken is now widely regarded as a villain, but Lewis' perspective has the advantage of capturing the time in which these views were developed. As history, it is fascinating if not always correct.

The final pages of the book depict, somewhat artificially, Salomon Brothers as it grapples with a take over bid. The action, while dramatic, seems more like a pretense for a big finish than the climax of the story Lewis is telling. The market went on, and so did Salomon brothers. But Lewis left, and his reasoning is unclear. He was certainly successful, and stood to be more so. His stated reasons seem unsatisfying, and the distance between his experiences during the book and his reluctance to share more intimate details of the forces that compelled his decision ultimately renders the conclusion unsatisfying.

This is a small complaint, however, and the book is certainly worth reading. Look for When Genius Failed for an update on some of the characters of Liar's Poker. It follows John Meriwether's ultimately unsuccessful attempts to revolutionize options trading and proves a compelling sequel (of sorts) to this book.

I thought this book was a fascinating truth-is-stranger-than-fiction insight into the high-powered Wall Street subculture. It is a must-read for people thinking about pursuing Wall Street jobs or CNNfn/CNBC junkies who want a behind-the-scenes look at those big investment banks you hear about all of the time. Lewis suffers from a one-sided cynicism about the people and culture of the street, but backs up his attitudes with engrossing, yet completely horrifying tales about the way 80's Wall St. traders behave.

Liar's Poker is one of the most insightful accounts of the investment banking world that one could read about without being an insider. It is in most respects a brutal story about the ruthlessness and total lack lf scruples that govern the world of high stakes finance but nevertheless an insightful account for the consequences of the explosive surge in bond markets from 323 billion at the end of the 70ies to 7 trillion by mid 80ies, following the FED's decision in late 1979 to let the rates float. With uncanny precision, methodical approach, and copious amounts of humor, Michael Lewis takes us on an insider tour de force of the investment banking business as embodied in the Salomon Brothers, Lewis' employer between 1985-87, during their time of fame and what made that company great, or shall we say notorious. Salomon greatly capitalized on the golden opportunities in bond markets starting with mortgage bonds, going through all related exotic instruments and derivatives, and ending with the junk bonds. Greed, ambition, and deceit were ranked top priorities at all organizational levels and duping the clients for corporate gains was the norm to attain success, recognition, fat bonuses, and promotions. Last but not least every was in pursuit of the much coveted title of Big Swinging Dick (women qualified for that title too) and even the occasional Balls of Brass title, the culmination of all deceitful selling techniques to uninformed/disinformed investors (read victims). The portraits of the Salomon high rollers are scary but at the same time comical; John Gutfreund, the CEO of Salomon, Lewie Ranieri, the mortgage bond superhero, who started from the bottom, in the mailroom and made it to be the top Swinging Dick (for a very short period though...nobody lasted too long), Michael Milken of Drexel Investments, their sworn enemy, all of them are unforgettable. Michael Lewis writes with insight and chilling realism. He cuts deep into what the deal is all about without fear of exposing the dirty, even illegal side of the business he was part of during the mid eighties, including his own role in ripping the naive investors off as a senior bond salesman.

Overall great reading; witty, sarcastic, satirical and captivating from start to finish. The reading is easier if you understand finance, especially bond pricing and bond market mechanics, otherwise it may become a little cumbersome. Liar's Poker particularly makes great reading for all Wall Street aspiring candidates, it's good to be prepared, you seldon know what awaits around the corner...

How boring, a book on bond trading, I thought when someone gave me this book for a gift. Thanks a lot (grrrr)! But, boy, was I happy to have been given this book after I started it. It is riveting, hilarious, educational, insightful. Lewis is utterly a disciple of Tom Wolfe's, and he almost does Tom Wolfe better than Tom Wolfe does, and that is a total compliment. While Wolfe has disappointed with his fiction writing, we can be grateful that we have Lewis to turn to for brilliant nonfiction, now that Wolfe isn't producing any (other than the occasional article in FYI). I even read LIAR'S POKER twice. The sign of a truly wonderful writer, is one who can write about something seemingly boring, and make it riveting. Lewis pulls that off here.

This book is interesting and still timely for a number of reasons. Michael Lewis was not hired by Salomon Brothers by going through the usual channels. That is, he didn't just send in his CV and go through a series of interviews. He did have or was finishing his master's degree at LSE and that would ordinarily be considered very competitive. But the details are quite intriguing. There are also several pages dealing with John Meriwether of Long-Term Capital fame. Meriwether, of course, directed the largest financial collapse in history, and he was trained at Salomon as were many other of these infamous bond traders. Its evidently no longer true that "Hedge funds are very strongly regulated by those (the banks) who lend the money" (see the article on Alan Greenspan in BusinessWeek, 12 Oct. 98)! Or has the FED always been in front of the eight ball? You would think that Frank Partnoy (FIASCO) would REALLY be upset with this idea rather than fuming about a zero-sum game in which there is always a winner and a loser with fairly normal contracts. I can't think of a worse case nuclear-waste derivative than 80:1 margin with long and short positions on every possible bond, CMO, and currency in the world all controlled by an arrogant hedge fund manager. This unheard of leverage could only be done by dozens of banks loaning out money on collateral that was already used to procure a loan across the street. Where was Frank when this was going on? Morgan Stanley was not even involved directly with LTCM, and perhaps that explains Frank's silence. Even to this day those at LTCM have a mantra that goes like "You know the model worked really well except for this tiny little problem", and that phrase is usually followed by "You don't understand (we are just too smart for you), all that was wrong was a tiny bit of bad timing and not quite enough leverage". Yes, a little tiny non convergence in interest rates did all that damage, and you boys and girls should be in jail. No retail broker would ever do anything like that. My answer to all this is that if you have spent 15 min studying the Black-Scholes equation and geometric Brownian motion of stock prices, you have wasted more than 14 min of your time. Lets hear from Frank. I think what I found most interesting in Liar's Poker was Mr. Lewis's detailed explanation of the development of the mortgage security market at Salomon Brothers. This info is not readily available, and I have no reason to doubt Mr. Lewis's account. If Salomon was the top investment bank when this book was written, times have certainly changed, because they are not even among the top three investment banks today.

I am told that the average tenure of a new investment banking recruit is under three years. This is mainly because they are worn our and weary. Apparently, an eighty hour week is considered a short week and anything less than showing up in the office six days a week means that you are not committed to your job. This never sounded like an attractive profession to me. I strongly suggest that if you are thinking about entering the investment banking world, or just thinking about investing, you should read LIAR'S POKER. What drives this industry to hyper-activity? Part of the answer must be that that is the way trades are made and business is done - or always has been. It's The Tradition Stall from THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION, by Mitchell, Coles and Metz. The industry also suffers from The Bureaucracy Stall - lots of inefficient policies and rules, and The Communications Stall - They don't really all get the same information at the same time. Perhaps, by replacing the bad habits of investment bankers with new good habits based on totally rethinking the way this business is done (see Mitchell's Eight-Step process), they would earn more and have more fun. Now that's a 2,000 percent solution! (Solving a problem is a 100% solution. Achieving 20 times those benefits or getting there 20 times as fast, equals 2000 percent.)

An entertaining look into the life of a Salomon Brothers bond trader in the 1980s. The book offers a cursive overview of the financial innovations during that period, but the real contribution is in examination of the culture and the personalities of the Wall Street traders. Not without some embellishment, Michael Lewis does a great job of communicating the eccentricities and absurdities of the traders - 'the big swinging dicks'. At the very least, 'Liar's Poker' is an entertaining read, at best, an insightful look at what (and who) turns the wheels of our financial institutions.

Much of what Lewis' writes about is true. Particularly as a trainee investment banker you are thrown in and expected to know how financial markets work. I have been a banker for 20 years and can only now confidently say I know half of what I am talking about. Mind you most clients I talk to really don't have a clue - another anecdote that Lewis brings to life. This is a great read for those with insight or interest in the Wall Street set, fast paced and so funny because its true. On top of it all, it offers great insight into an interesting part of financial history, much of which has parallels to the 2007 Credit Crisis - happy reading

It provides a good picture of the Wall Street during the 80's but it is sometimes tiring when describing the personality of some characters.

This was a story which had to be told. And it had to be told from the inside. It couldn't have been done any other way, and Michael Lewis does a fairly god job of it.

The book essentially tells the story of the rise and fall from wealth (and grace) of Salomon Brothers, and in particular, their mortgage trading group. Those times were clearly heady ones, with the creation and destruction of ridiculous amounts of wealth - from thin air. (It's a more common phenomenon now given the increasing sizes and reaches of the global financial markets, but this probably represented the earliest of the really big cycles.) Lewis takes us deep into that world, giving us a view from a prime seat in the middle of the best action of those times - at Salomon Brothers. In doing so, he is able to create a fairly strong feel for that world, with all its extravagances and idiosyncrasies, while simultaneously providing a fair amount of objective narrative on the internal and external events. His fleshing out of the characters in the book is well done too, which allows the reader a fair level of involvement and empathy with the events. Another strength of the book is that Lewis never gets too technical, and is able to explain fairly complicated markets in terms simple enough for most people to understand.

On the flip side, I have to caution you that at the end of the day, Lewis might have been a good banker, but he's not a great writer. The book could have been taken to a different level altogether in the hands of a better writer, and much of the strength of this book is eventually derived from the story. That said, overall, I still think Lewis has done a very credible job, and the book is a very worthwhile read for everybody, not just bankers.

There are few authors who have the skill, knowledge, and the ability to entertain as Michael Lewis does in Liar's Poker.

Liar's Poker is about Wall Street 1980s from the view of Salomon Brothers where he worked. It goes into the founding of the mortgage market as we know it today and even gives a glimpse into how the closeminded views of upper management almost destroyed one of the greatest forces on Wall Street almost overnight.

It should also be noted that this book serves as an important case study into business ethics. The book gives a clear view of the unethical atmosphere of Salomon Brothers which, in retrospect, should have been a red flag to the almost destruction of Salomon in the early 90s when Paul Mozer, one of its traders, was found to have broken a new rule restricting how many bonds were purchased at government auctions.

In any event, the book is charmingly wonderful in nature and worth a read if only for pleasure. From a business standpoint it shows what not to do in order to run a successful company and from a trader standpoint it shows the dangers of screwing your customers over to better your own situation.

Very fun, easy read. Michael Lewis brings you into wall street with a very easy to read style. You get the feeling that you're really learning about something new and at the same time, it's about one of the largest transfers of U.S $ in history. So if you like business, but don't like to read much, this book works for you!

This should be required reading analysts and associates along with `Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle' and `Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success'. Each gives a different and illuminating perspective on the ups and downs of the many different departments that make up large, institutional finance organizations. Moreover, there are in totality especially useful if you have no idea about how finance actually operates on a day-to-day basis beyond what you see in your economics courses (definitely the case at Harvard, U Chicago, MIT and the like, where these firms heavily recruit). Can definitely give those without and an internship or direct experience the ability to level the playing field to a large degree.

Michael Lewis writes a very interesting, funny account of bond trading in the eighties. While I often like to escape in fictional novels when I read, this memoir of Lewis' experiences on Wall Street are entertaining enough to keep me coming back for more.

While some reviewers found his technical descriptions of mortgage backed securities, junk bonds, etc. a bit boring, I enjoyed learning more about the various investment options and how they got started. Lewis definitely gives you an inside look at the tricks and deception that could be used by the financial services industry - hoping that we "suckers" will be prompted to buy enough to make them the big bucks.

And that's the point of the book - this game is all about making money for the trader and their employer, screw everyone else. Lewis includes hints about how the money and reputation as a "Big Swinging Dick" is enough to overcome any feelings of guilt about "blowing up" companies or clients (the nickname alone tells you about the lack of women in the industry).

I also enjoyed learning about how traders see the world - and how fear is what really controls the market. If you understand fear, you become a great seller of bonds or equities. In fact, Lewis makes it clear that no one can really predict how the market will go. The most successful people in the industry are portrayed as being either great salesmen or having a true (though rare) understanding of the big picture effects of a causative event (in other words, how people react based on fear after an event).

There is a deeper message here too, if you are reading closely. Michael Lewis decided that trading his conscience for making money was not for him. He felt that he and others in his profession were reaping benefits "out of all proportion" to their value in society. He makes no attempt to change the reader's views on the right or wrong of the system - he lets us judge for ourselves.

Anyone working for a financial services company - especially if you are in an unrelated part of the business - should read this book. It offers great insight on what can seem like perplexing aspects of the company culture. And if you don't work for a financial services company, you would still be better off reading this book, if only to learn how not to be a "sucker" for the financial gain of a "Big Swinging Dick."

An intriguing book. For someone with little exposure to the financial sector or Wall Street, this is a fascinating introduction to how a big brokerage house gets to be big. Sell! Sell! Sell! And let the buyer beware! Hilarious, scary and infuriating, it's enough to make you cash out your portfolio and put your money somewhere safe, like Vegas. Highly recommended.

Michael Lewis launched his successful career as an author with his book Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street, which is both a youthful memoir and a journalistic look at the inner workings of Salomon Brothers, a Wall Street firm that grew fat trading bonds and then crashed and burned. The book takes place, roughly, between the years 1984 and 1987, and so I wasn't surprised that the book reminded me of the movie Wall Street - just replace Gordon Gecko with Salomon's head John Gutfreund. At the beginning of the book, Lewis has just been hired, quite unexpectedly, by Salomon, and he takes us through his trajectory at the company, from the cut-throat training process to his days as a bond trader in London. From this vantage point, Lewis was able to watch the company, emboldened by spectacular success in the 1980s, become a symbol of corporate gluttony. Along the way, Lewis profiles many of the company's outsized personalities. He also delves into the intricacies of the bond market in such a way that the arcane becomes pretty readable. The book is also filled with anecdotes about the conspicuous consumption of those times and the raucous, inelegant trading floor, filled with foul-mouthed traders who threw phones and insults and reveled in their gluttony. Lewis' revelation was that the company (and its competitors) made profits at the expense of its customers, and, while the period that Lewis chronicles is interesting in its own right, its impact is somewhat diminished by the many corporate scandals and Wall Street improprieties that have occurred since the book was first published. Against this backdrop, Liar's Poker is no longer an exceptional story that defined an era, it is merely another moment in the cycle of Wall Street corruption and ensuing retribution that continues today.

I picked up a copy of this book after reading Moneyball - Michael Lewis's book on the business of baseball (an excellent book that I have now read several times). Although Wall Street does not hold the interest to me that baseball does, this is an entertaining and informative book on big money trading in the 80's. I was engaged from start to finish with the personalities of the folks at Salomon Brothers (the firm which Lewis trained and worked for). Although I am not familiar with the details of bond trading, this was a facinating journey and well told. Fun to read about Milken, Perelman, Icahn from the days when they were only known by readers of the Wall Street Journal and not household names. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys finding out about corporate culture and how the personalities of the individual can shape and effect the whole. Then pick-up Moneyball and see how a maverick personality has started to effect change in baseball.

This was a very good read. It kept me entertained the whole time. I came away from it with a better understanding of the bond market and many of the Wall Street firms.

I read the book after having it recommended by a friend who has a friend that made a killing as a bond trader. He was constantly relating stories from his days trading, and said the book was very close to the way it was when he was trading.

Even if it is only half true, I realize that they make their money from commisions, not from making my money grow.

If you are looking for Wall St. entertainment, I highly recommend it. If you are thinking of investing all your money with brokers, again I highly recommend it so you can rethink that plan.

I picked up this book because it is highly popular among investment bankers, whose fat wallets were enough to take this book seriously. I am not an investment banker and do not intend to be one but I was keen to find out what makes Wall Street special. The book not only satisfied my curiosity but also was pleasantly amusing.

The author traces the glorious and gloomy times of Salomon Brothers, a big financial enterprise in which he worked long enough to be able to tell this tale and become a rich man. He explains some financial innovations of Salomon brother's in lay man's terms, which makes this book very readable for all.

The author's self-deprecating humor and his vivid analysis of the people he came across in his organization make the account entertaining.

Whether or not the author's opinions on technical matters in this book are meritorious-I am not qualified to say. If you are a finance novice and curious to find out about life in that universe, you will find this book worthwhile.

My expectations of this book were perhaps mislead. I thought that this would deal with more the generalized view of Wall Street. However, it really concentrates on the lives of traders.

Lewis does shed some light on Wall Street trading in general, including a good description of mortgage trading and junk bond trading. However, this book sort of throws it into the mix. I wasn't sure what Lewis was trying to do. Sometimes it felt like a history book, sometimes a biography, sometimes an economics lesson, sometimes a comedy. It felt haphazard and lacked direction, and with the writing style presented, it lacked a certain amount of fluidity.

It was fun to learn the different people in Wall Street. From the obese, abusive traders, the short sighted and greedy executives, the brown nosers, to the "back row" trainees. It's basically a fun little description of office life at Solomon Brothers in the eighties, not an exciting expose on the finance industry as the cover would like you to believe.

Liar's Poker provides the reader with a wonderful account of one of Wall Street's most formiddable houses being left by the wayside. Embodied in the compensation structure at the firm, Lewis' tale describes vast numbers of star employees fleeing Salomon for greener pastures. This book gives an excellent account of how a once mighty firm was driven into the ground by the haplessness of an ineffective board personified by John Gutfreund.

Without doubt, this is one fo the finest accounts of what really happens on Wall Street that one will read. It truly dives into the depths of ignorance on the trading floors where no one truly knows what they are doing or where their futures will lead them.

I fully recommend this book to anyone interested in the greed and decadence that plagued the 80s culture. For the business buff, this is a combination of humor and sadness of a once great firm that cannot and should not be missed.

Basically a typical "story" about a typical financial firm. Some fimilar names if you have read other books of the time. Author himself doesn't show up until last quarter of the book. A passtime if you have nothing else to do, but definitely not worth 100+ 5-star reviews

Michael should never have wasted his time - and sullied his reputation - by writing his paean to Jim Clark, the elder statesman of the 'dot bomb' generation ("The Next Next Thing") By doing so, he missed out on the real story of the age. But hey, no one's perfect. "Liar's Poker" about the Wall Street of the 1980s and is one of THE finest books about the realities of that perenially shaddy business. Anyone who read it, and took its message to heart, would have seen the 'dot bomb' coming from a mile away. Too bad publishers weren't buying THAT story. Lewis is a thoroughly entertaining writer. "Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street" is a newly minted subtitle of which I thoroughly disapprove. There has been no 'rising' since 1980. It's been fraud piled upon fraud as Michael knows better than most. I worked on "The Street" in the 1980s and his account is 100% accurate - which should have scared the heck out of any investor with a brain.

Still the best book on finance ever written. Others have tried to copy but none has come close to the original. A must read book for everyone interested in Finance and making a career on Wall Street.

If he didn't describe it with such wry, amused detachment, Michael Lewis' chronicle of his time at Salomon Brothers during the 1980s could easily be mistaken for a modern installment of Dante's inferno. Each day on the trading floor, as computers blinked and eager brokers barked into the phone, bright young people yielded to siren call of greed. Personal destruction was the goal of the game, as Darwinism ran rampant and the strong metaphorically devoured the weak as a matter of course.

Somehow Lewis avoids turning this often disturbing display of human baseness into a morality play. His sense of humor is most likely what allowed to him survive, and even succeed, during his time in the lion's den. In "Liar's Poker", he uses it to great effect, painting vivid portraits of the colorfully flawed egoists who drove the bond market into excess and chaos. For all their blustering, Lewis reveals many of the redoubtable players in the bond game to be sad and insecure, and avoids the temptation to pass judgement on them.

It's no wonder that Lewis finally answered his calling in journalism, because he displays amazing skill here, and not only as a writer and observer of the human condition. He's equally adept at ferreting out facts, analyzing them, and presenting them to lay readers in an entirely comprehensible way. In the course of his rollicking story, he manages to deliver a pretty detailed lesson on the basics of finance, the bond market, and the ways it impacts our daily lives.

As a neophyte himself when he went into investment banking, Lewis seems to tutor the reader even as he's learning some of the basics himself. He explains how the bond market drama of the eighties began with the adoption of a new operating system by the fed, targeting money supply growth instead of interest rates. This caused bond prices to swing wildly and created a window of opportunity for traders in the heretofore backwater bond market to reap huge sums in arbitrage. At the same time, consumer and government debt skyrocketed, creating a enormous demand for fixed income products.

Many of the big shots, "or "Big Swinging...", as Lewis often
refers to them, happened to be in the right place at the right time. Luck definitely played a large part in making many of them legends. As for Lewis himself, he emerges as one of the luckiest of all, escaping with a rich experience, the material for a terrific book, and maybe even his soul.

The stories of Wall St excesses are well told and most readers will find very captivating. "True Greed" is a very fitting byline. Useful also for understanding financial markets. I thought the book got way too technical though, and tried to become a history of the bond markets in the 80's. I wanted to know more about the traders themselves, what did they do with the enormous sums of money they made, what was life outside the office like? We are not told anything about how long the working day is, what their friends thought of them, where they lived etc.

Lewis spins a rollicking tale around the formative years of a niche in the bond market which still exists today. Aside from simply teaching the lay person a very basic lesson in finance, Lewis gives us glimpse onto the trading floor that we may or may not want to see. Investors will shudder and those ambitious souls with iron stomachs (you'll have to read the book)will pack their bags for the city to become traders.

I originally read this book because of its relevance to my job in the asset-backed bond industry. For those just starting out in the business, it is a must read.

For anyone else who enjoys a well-written yet hilarious trip to The Street, I highly recommend Liar's Poker.

Not a card game at all but a game of bluff and sizing up your opponent. It is very appropriate that the book starts off with the example of John Gutfreund (CEO of Salomon) trying to engage his chief bond trader in a single round of Liars Poker for 1 million dollars, because it is symptomatic of the egos of the players, the money that was being made and the excesses that characterised what is now generally called the greed decade.

Lewis's perspective is that of an insider as he was a bond trader for Salomon Brothers in their New York and London offices. It's generally a very funny story with some hilarious descriptions of some of the characters and their behavior. Hilarious that is, until you realise that damage was being done to lives, companies and industries. As the author so succintly put it "the range of acceptable conduct...was wide indeed.It said something about the ability of the free marketplace to mold people's behavior into a socially acceptable pattern...this was capitalism at its most raw, and it was self-destructive." That this was true he goes on to illustrate with stories about trades gone bad, deals losing millions, and people skewered for things they had no knowledge of. I guess you could say that this was Darwinian Capitalism, these people had evolved into predators and were at the top of the food chain. Lewis himself says as much "the place was governed by the simple understanding that the unbridled pursuit of perceived self-interest was healthy. Eat or be eaten." It is no coincidence that one of his colleagues was called the Human Piranha!. Naturally, behaviour like this will lead to a messy ending and so it is, with the story culminating with a description of the Stock Market crash of '87 and Salomon itself in trouble.

I read this book at about the same time as 'Den of Thieves' and would recommend both (that is, if you are interested in a historical view of Wall Street; remember these events took place 10-15 years ago). Liars Poker is good for the witty personal perspective Lewis brings, the other book gives a broader view of Wall Street and an investigative journalistic perspective of the insider trading scandal involving Michael Milken et al.

This is the book so many others have tried to imitate, Michael Lewis's classic account of his time as a bond salesman. Like many of his imitators, Lewis has a seemingly endless supply of funny stories about his time at Salomon's bond desk during its glory days. Unlike others, however, Lewis is also tremendously insightful about what the real meaning of his job was, and what such a culture implied for the state of the American economy and culture.

What the heck do all those Wall Street insiders know that we normal people don't? Nothing. And author Michael Lewis tells us the behind the scenes stories that illustrate this very point. He focuses on his time spent a Salomon Brothers in the 1980's. He tells a tale with humorous bent and really gets you feeling the tenseness that pervaded the office. Not only a quick and interesting read, but an insightful one too.

Do you want a great laugh? Well I had one with this book. Normally it takes a while to warm me up, but Lewis did the job in 10 pages. The book gives a good impression about 'the big swinging ...', but watch out. Don't start reading, if you don't have the time to finish it the same day. The book kept me out of the pool for a hole day on my vacation, so, for all you big swingers, have fun and buy the book...(I read the book 2 years ago, but it's still in my head! )

I am an investment banker on Wall Street and found the book quite funny and pointed. However, it will probably be less enjoyable for those not on Wall Street. There are a lot of "in-jokes" which might be hilarious to M&A analysts like myself, but pointless to others.

Lewis is a witty guy, and this makes it an enjoyable read. He does try to make some serious points, and basically demonstrates that an Art History major makes for great conversation and metaphors, but little true insight. Lastly, always beware of people who hold themselves out as the only rational/honest guy in the bunch.

This book is tremendously overrated. Lewis' writing style, while amusing, is also quite amateurish. Plus he seems to have a major superiority complex - is he really the only honest guy on Wall Street? Puh-leease.

This book was so inspirational and superb it may have changed my life. It changed my perspective on things and it was so funny and enlightening it in a way contributed to helping me go from a Junior Manager in a Fortune 500 company to Head of Division with responsibility over 15 countries in an International Fortune 500 Company...a must read for any MBA or graduate diving into the corporate rat race and wanting to know - is anything possible? the answer is yes. Depends how you do it...A great read. Thanks!

Michael Lewis describes his corner of wall street pretty well. The 1980s bond market. He continually contrasts the practice and culture of trading bonds with the dogma of Economics.

Over the course of the book it becomes easy to draw parallels between Wall Street and Feudal Europe. The Economists are like the Catholic Church in Feudal Europe. The Traders are like the Nobles and Royalty in Medieval Europe. The Job of the Nobles is to fight other Nobles over the right to control land, rent, and protection fees. The Job of the Church is to teach people who aren't Nobles that they should do what the Nobles tell them to. In exchange, the Church will occasionally ask the Nobles to behave a little better.

this book is a must read if you are getting into the financial industry along with "when genius failed" and others.

OUTSTANDING!! This is the single best book I've ever read for learning the basics of life in a Wall St. investment bank. Very accessible and humorous, yet informative as well.

I read this book again for the fifth or sixth time. It continues to be a great read. I highly recommend it for anyone in finance. Thoroughly accessible and thoroughly enjoyable.

Excellent book. Easy reading. One more proof that we never learn from past mistakes. Perhaps subprime mortgage lenders have not red this thing. Or perhaps they did it very seriously. Find out for yourself. It is a good investment of your time and money. After this book, continue with "Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco ". Have fun!

A very well written account of a young bond trader and his firm, Salmon Brothers. I literally could not put the book down once I started reading it. One point to reflect upon from the book is the story of Ranieri, the man who conceived and sold the idea of mortgage backed securities, now the source of grave anxiety and concern in the financial market as of December, 2007.

Michael Lewis is an excellent author. In Liar's Poker, he describes his life at Salomon Brothers in the 1980's as a bond salesman. It is not a mere biography which is why this book deserves my 5 star rating. Lewis does an outstanding job in 3 different areas:

First, he manages to make his story funny and entertaining. Sure, he may have exagerrated in some parts and selctively wrote about the more entertaining characters at Salomon, but that does not take away from the story of investment banking in those days.

Second, he gives the reader an honest and fair story of young investment bankers. He not only tells us his story but also dabbles in the stories of some of his classmates. Any young business school or college graduate interested in investment banking would benefit greatly from his book.

Third, he researched other areas of investment banking - not just the area where he was assigned. He has a big section on mortgage bonds which is extremely relevant to today's markets given the downturn in the housing market and subprime mortgage problems. Also discusses junk bonds and equities. It may sound dull in my review, but the way he writes about them is a lot more interesting which is why he is a bestseller author and I am merely an Amazon reviewer.

I highly recommend Liar's Poker to those interested in investment banking, Wall Street or investing in general. If you enjoyed Liar's Poker, then consider Stewart's Den of Thieves.

I bought Liar's Poker thinking that it will teach me the game of the same name, but instead it taught me a lot about the bond markets and traders in general. It makes me want to be a trader. Very interesting read and definitely teaches you something about how bond and mortgage markets work. If you are looking to learn Liar's Poker as a game, then this is not the book for it though, except for learning how to bluff like in the game. You can learn how to bluff by bluffing and not by reading books anyway.

The book is clearly satire, and definitely exaggerates a bit, but it still gives you a sense of the Wall Street culture, where people are extremely wealthy but also extremely unrefined (scarfing greasy cheeseburgers while making millions). Very funny. Also extremely informative on topics such as the rise of mortgage bonds and junk bonds as financial tools. The book gives a great portrayal of the genius of the people behind these financial innovations. In fact, its portrayal of people in general is very funny and memorable. One final upside: there are some books, where, if you don't read them for about a week, you have no clue what's going on anymore. This is not one of those. There are relatively few people to keep track of, and they are described so well that you can't forget them.

I would DEFINITELY recommend this book. Funny and informative, a window onto a strange culture known as Wall Street.

I spent years in the hallowed and occasionally corrupt halls of Wall Street. This is a fascinating tale by Michael Lewis covering investment banking in the 1980's. It's with great irony that many are looking back to this pages and seeing the accurate predictions of the looming S&L disaster. Michael Lewis came of age successfully trading bonds for Solomon Brothers, and he gives you a nice insider's view from the trenches. If you've ever wondered what it's like to experience the excitement, pressure, greed and fear emotions from the pits, the big boy pits that is, this is a good book to read.

Great book, so funny, makes me want to rush to Wall Street and become a trader!

I bought this in 1997 and only recently found the time to read it and am I glad I read it!

The narration is incredibly funny and often I found myself chuckling out loud. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this, Kudos Michael!

This is a great book! Many friends recommended it before I finally picked it up, and once I started, it was hard to put it down and I finished it in a day. Because the author was a successful insider, he had sufficiently juice details about what goes on in the company and yet, because he is so new to the company (he left after less than 3 years, even before his bonus was supposed to break the band, which is suppose to occur in the third year), he only had some arm's length insight as to what is going on. Nevertheless, it coincided very well with what was described in "Nightmare on Wall Street", but this is a far more entertaining book to read.

His book also give a far better insight of what Ranieri has done for Solomon; in effect, Ranieri *created* a monopoly for Solomon and yet that monopoly was destroyed by office politics. Even on Wall Street where money talks, there are no limits to what politics will do to get its way.

Michael Lewis has yet again proved what a great writer he is with his lucid style of elucidation. In this book, Lewis talks about the raging 80s -as far as bond trading is concerned- and the events at Solomon Brothers during that period of euphoria. Lewis gives us a glimpse of the street- the exuberance, the egoistic, and the bizzare among the various cadres of the bond value chain, as he walks us thru his memoir of 4 odd years at Solomon. The depiction of each of the extreme characters are just great.

This book is both entertaining and informative of the situations facing many of the people at trading desks on the Street and in the City. While things have changed since Michael Lewis's time, much has stayed the same. The money, intelligence, ego, and drive of many market participants twenty years ago are still a requirement for success in the IB world today.

Liar's Poker is to future investment bankers as Scott Turow's One L is to future law students. Not only is this book informative, it's entertaining and filled with a vast array of characters. Lewis has the gift or storytelling. Not only does the book cover the process by which the author got the job offer at Salomon Brothers coming out of the London School of Economics and the fearful weeks of the Training Program in New York, he aptly tells the story of the firm and its rise and fall, from the beginning of mortgage-backed securities and the millions made by MBS traders to the crash of October 1987. This is an excellent book that my generation can learn from. And while the ability to communicate and trading technology has become faster, from what I can tell, many of the personalities within the i-banking world described in this book have not. This is an exciting book that will keep you reading. Know what happened twenty years ago and you firm will not likely send you to trade equities in Dallas.

I read this book when it first came out. It was fascinating--providing a compelling insight into the way a real financial institution that got more respect than it deserved placed profit above ethics. Shocking and hilarious at the same time.

Engrossing at the outset then runs out of steam. I had to put it down.

Everyone has read this, and its easy to understand why. One of the best written books about Wall Street ever, Michael Lewis is superb as he goes about describing his experience at Salomon Brothers during the 1980's as a bond salesman. Introduces us to the legendary trader John Meriweather before he started Long Term Capital Management.

The book gave me insight to the world of the Investment Banker. It is funny and very interesting. It made me realize Enron is not an isolated case.

Definitely worth reading, not a waste of your time. Of course, you must have some interest for I-banking drama and bonds.

My son who is halfway through a business de