House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris & Wretched Excess on Wall St
By William D. Cohan (Random House, 2009)
“Engrossing….[Cohan] gives us in these pages a chilling, almost minute-by-minute account of the 10, vertigo-inducing days that one year ago revealed Bear Stearns to be a flimsy house of cards in a perfect storm….He does a deft job of explicating the underlying reasons that put Bear Stearns in peril in the first place….turns complex Wall Street maneuverings into high drama that is gripping — and almost immediately comprehensible — to the lay reader….riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading”
–Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Cohan vividly documents the mix of arrogance, greed, recklessness, and pettiness that took down the 86 year old brokerage house and then the entire economy. It’s a page-turner in the tradition of the 1990 Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Heylar, offering both a seemingly comprehensive understanding of the business and wide access to insiders….hard to put down, especially thanks to its dishy, often profane, quotes from insiders” —BusinessWeek
“Masterfully reported….[Cohan] has turned into one of our most able financial journalists….he deploys not only his hands-on experience of this exotic corner of the financial industry but also a remarkable gift for plain-spoken explanation…the other great strength of this important book is the breadth and skill of the author’s interviews…Cohan does a brilliant job of sketching in the eccentric, vulgar, greedy, profane and coarse individuals who ignored all these warnings to their own profit and the ruin of so many others. It’s impossible to do justice to his reportorial detail in a brief review…” — Los Angeles Times
“A riveting blow-by-blow account of the days leading up to the government-backed shotgun wedding (to JPM).” — The Economist
“A masterly reconstruction of Bear Stearns implosion–a tumultuous episode in Wall Street history that still reverberates throughout our economy today….meticulous reporting…..first drafts of history don’t get much better than this” —Bloomberg
