Synopsis

THE MONEY CULTURE takes us on an uproarious ride through the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial markets since the crash of '29.

Michael Lewis, whose LIAR'S POKER foreshadowed events at Salomon Brothers, instructs us in the moral codes of Donald Trump, Leona Helmsley, Ivan Boesky and sundry luminaries. He conducts a tour through the 1980s world of high finance in chapters like "When Bad Things Happen to Rich People," "Why You Should Leave Home Without It: The Growing Absurdity of the American Express Card" and "The Difference Between Milken's Morals and Ours." It is a trip we are not soon to forget.

"One of those rare works that encapsulate and define an era." (Fortune)

Annotation

An intrepid and mercilessly sharp-sighted safari through the financial jungles of the 1980s--from the author of the New York Times bestseller Liar's Poker. With devastating wit and a flair for unveiling the smoke and mirrors of high finance, Lewis takes a new look at many of the most influential and devastating episodes of the get-rich-quick decade.

Library Journal

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