Boomerang; Travels in the New Third World
Tabitha Soren (Author photograph) and Dwight Eschl New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. First Edition [stated]. Fifth printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xxi, [3], 213, [3] pages. This work is based on articles that Lewis wrote for Vanity Fair magazine. Michael Monroe Lewis (born October 15, 1960) is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance. Lewis attended Princeton University, from which he graduated. After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker. Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side. In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015. Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and been notable selection features on the New York Times Bestsellers Lists. The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.
Michael Lewis's investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington, DC, we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor, and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations. Derived from a Kirkus review: A world tour of nations that have collapsed financially or that played a role in the collapse of others. The author tours Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany and California to compose a broad picture of what went wrong. Like Lewis’ other bestsellers, this book is alternately wry, laugh-out-loud humorous, serious and, most importantly, filled with insights. The author is a master at explaining financially complex realms by casting them as narratives of individuals. In each place, he finds people famous, infamous and nearly anonymous who can fairly be rendered as villains or heroes. Each chapter started as an article for Vanity Fair, yet the seemingly disparate features coalesce nicely in the book. Lewis is willing to generalize about the characteristics within each nation that led to unexpected consequences. The author delivers a nice balance of analysis and lucid writing. An enlightening, scary journey. From a review by The New York Times: Michael Lewis possesses the rare storyteller’s ability to make virtually any subject both lucid and compelling. In his new book, “Boomerang,” he actually makes topics like European sovereign debt, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank not only comprehensible but also fascinating — even, or especially, to readers who rarely open the business pages or watch CNBC. The book could not be more timely given the worries about Europe’s deepening debt crisis and the recent warning issued by Christine Lagarde, managing director of the I.M.F, that “the current economic situation is entering a dangerous phase." Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Wall Street, Tundra, Ireland, Germany, Capitalism, Currency Trading, Real Estate Development, Debt, Credit, Economics
ISBN: 9780393081817
[Book #85559]
Price: $27.50