The Money Culture [Paperback]

Michael Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1992

The author of the best-selling Liar's Poker offers a witty, trenchant analysis of the world of high finance in the 1980s and the cult of wealth that produced such moguls as Michael Milken and Donald Trump. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Essays on the money-mad '80s from the author of the bestselling Liar's Poker .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From 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
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140173188
• ISBN-13: 978-0140173185
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #891,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Lewis, the author of Boomerang, Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Panic, Home Game and The Big Short, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their three children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Mediocre Anthology, July 24, 2001

By 

Z. Blume (St. Louis, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Money Culture (Paperback)

This collection of previously published articles is at times very funny, insightful, and a good primer on several financial issues that dominated the 1980's, but it can also be repetitive (many of the articles repeat jokes, anecdotes, and some even seem to be slightly altered version of previous articles)and is quite dated since the articles detail financial events and characters of the mid to late 1980's. I learned a fair amount about the savings and loan scandals, leveraged buy outs, and the Japanese economic miracle and collapse, and also enjoyed some amusing tales of financial excess, but I had to read through a lot of less than interesting pages to find those treasures. I would not recommend someone buy this book, but if you can find it in the library, it is certainly worth flipping through it.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, entertaining reading about finance issues in the 80's, February 28, 2002

By 

Dan E. Ross "Dan Ross" (Frisco, Tx USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Money Culture (Paperback)

This is a collection of essays previously published in newspapers and magazines around the nation where some 10 years ago we could witness Lewis' early literary attempts. The book was consistently funny, insightful, and a good primer on several financial issues that dominated the 1980's. Most of these articles, for those interested in the authors' chronological history, came after he wrote his groundbreaking financial humor book entitled Liars Poker, which is regarded as a "must read" for anyone entering into the investment banking industry, particularly in bond trading where we he worked.

Mr. Lewis' writing style is great, which is why I read his book entitled Next, another good read if you are interested. Most of the topics in this book cover financial/business culture issues that date back during the late eighties, so there's also a bit of historical perspective to it.

The topics are a wide array and include stories about the domestic S&L scandal, some events that occurred in the French Bourse (their word for a stock market), the proliferation of the American Express Card during the 1980s, some offshore banking insights, Louis Rukeyser, Donald Trump, LBO stories and some comments on the Japanese capitalists. Like I said, he talks about a wide array of topics but remember that the book is a compilation of many articles.

I give it a 4 star rating. It was highly entertaining but nothing that caused my life to change or caused me to have a "light bulb" go off in my head.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Lewis's Best Work, February 4, 2008

By 

S. T. Sullivan "law student, culture vulture,... (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The Money Culture (Paperback)

Michael Lewis wrote one of the great popular books about Wall Street, Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street. It is a classic of what life was like on Wall Street during the time when mortgage backed securities, something we're hearing a lot about currently, was just getting off the ground. He also wrote the bestseller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which is a great baseball book. This collection of pieces written right before and after Liar's Poker is all right, but it is not his best work.

I have a high tolerance for bad writing if I am interested in the subject manner, but even I had trouble getting through some of the early pieces in here. Perhaps Lewis had to get all this poor sophomoric writing out of his system before he could write decent books. If the pieces collected in Money Culture are what it takes to get to Moneyball, then so be it.

Still, from a reader's standpoint, don't bother with this one, read Liar's Poker and Moneyball instead.