Books › Liar's Poker
Liar's Poker
Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
First published 1989 · 384 pages
A wickedly funny, front-row ticket to the chaotic, testosterone-fueled circus of 1980s Wall Street.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like being cornered at a loud, expensive bar by the smartest, funniest guy in the room as he spills every dirty secret of his former employer. The pace is brisk and relentless, mirroring the frenetic, high-stakes energy of a 1980s trading floor. It is soaked in a mood of absurd, testosterone-fueled chaos, where millions of dollars change hands on a whim and grown men throw telephones at each other. The prose is sharp, conversational, and wickedly observant, turning complex financial maneuvers into a hilarious, cynical comedy of errors. It delights readers who crave character-driven nonfiction that exposes the ridiculousness of powerful institutions, offering a journey from wide-eyed bewilderment to amused, disillusioned clarity.
- Mood
- frenetic
- absurd
- high-stakes
- testosterone-fueled
- Tone
- wry
- cynical
- irreverent
- observant
- hilarious
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- unchecked greed · absurdity of high finance · toxic workplace culture · illusion of expertise · loss of innocence
- The writing
- Sharp, conversational, and relentlessly entertaining, blending journalistic observation with comedic storytelling.
- The arc
- Moves from wide-eyed bewilderment to cynical mastery, culminating in a disillusioned but amused exit.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love fast-paced, character-driven nonfiction that exposes the absurdities of powerful institutions with a heavy dose of dark humor.
Content notes
- profanity
- toxic masculinity
- workplace bullying
- financial ruin
About the book
Liar's Poker is a non-fiction, semi-autobiographical book by Michael Lewis describing the author's experiences as a bond salesman on Wall Street during the late 1980s. First published in 1989, it is considered one of the books that defined Wall Street during the 1980s.
This bestselling and hilarious book blew the doors off Wall Street's boardrooms and introduced the world to the writing of Michael Lewis. In this shrewd and wickedly funny book, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progress through a powerful investment bank. From an unlikely beginning (art history at Princeton?) he rose in two short years from Salomon Brothers trainee to Geek (the lowest form of life on the trading floor) to Big Swinging Dick, the most dangerous beast in the jungle, a bond salesman who could turn over millions of dollars' worth of doubtful bonds with just one call. With the eye and ear of a born storyteller, Michael Lewis shows us how things really worked on Wall Street. In the Salomon training program a roomful of aspirants is stunned speechless by the vitriolic profanity of the Human Piranha; out on the trading floor, bond traders throw telephones at the heads of underlings and Salomon chairman Gutfreund challenges his chief trader to a hand of liar's poker for one million dollars; around the world in London, Tokyo, and New York, bright young men like Michael Lewis, connected by telephones and computer terminals, swap gross jokes and find retail buyers for the staggering debt of individual companies or whole countries. The bond traders, wearing greed and ambition and badges of honor, might well have swaggered straight from the pages of Bonfire of the Vanities. But for all their outrageous behavior, they were in fact presiding over enormous changes in the world economy. Lewis's job, simply described, was to transfer money, in the form of bonds, from those outside America who saved to those inside America who consumed. In doing so, he generated tens of millions of dollars for Salomon Brothers, and earned for himself a ringside seat on the greatest financial spectacle of the decade: the leveraging of America. - Publisher.
Description from Open Library.
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