14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
As The Market World Turns..., January 18, 2006
This review is from: What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen (Hardcover)
Oral histories can be problematic reads. It's not just that the cleverest sound bite isn't always the best way of explaining something, or that a writer trying to get quotes to smoothly blend together faces the mounting temptation to play around with his interviewee's words. There's often a mosaic-like confusion of voices, which can make reading about a normally difficult subject even harder, like trying to figure out a 40-year-running soap opera from watching a single episode.
Eric J. Weiner's "What Goes Up" traces the history of Wall Street from pre-World War II days to just after 9/11 in mosaic fashion, both by concentrating each chapter on a unique milestone moment and then by spinning out each chapter in the form of quotes, most running several paragraphs, from people who were there.
There are some great quotes, too. "Something I've learned is that every good idea on Wall Street is driven into the ground like a tomato stake," says writer James Grant, in a chapter about the rise of junk bonds. Mutual fund guru Peter Lynch recalls cutting short a rare vacation to Ireland in 1987 when the market suddenly lost a fifth of its value in one day. Jerry Tsai, the Lynch of an earlier day, candidly recalls the heady Go-Go 1960s, while longtime broker Peter Low recalls the guilt of speculating on Vietnam War news.
"It's mean," he says. "If news breaks out that there's a drug epidemic, Wall Street asks 'Who makes the needles?'"
The downside of Weiner's narrative is that it's not especially enlightening, moving as it does so quickly from one soap opera to the next. It doesn't stick with any one of these, like the acquisition of Shearson Loeb Rhoades by American Express or the RJR Nabisco merger later that decade memorialized in "Barbarians At The Gate," long enough to convey much understanding. The connecting narrative is bare, designed not to intrude on the quotes, but as the large cast of characters in each chapter either talk over the same few points or else disagree with one another with Susan Lucci gusto, one misses a central, unifying voice.
I liked Weiner's work with the chapter on "junk-bond king" Michael Milken, especially because that has not only a good selection of quotes but a linear narrative that arrives at a bold conclusion, that being that Milken was essentially laid out for the sins of others. "Milken never did anything wrong," says former Wall Street Journal editor Jude Wanniski. "Nothing."
Milken is quoted as well, but like Sanford Weill, Warren Buffett, and some others, he didn't cooperate with Weiner's book. Rather, Weiner took quotes from other sources and included them in his oral history, properly notated, but still a little awkward. It would have been better had Weiner included those second-hand comments in a beefier narrative framework, and left the long quotes for those who did talk to him, especially since they include some voluble, interesting, and underappreciated figures.
I liked "What Goes Up," but not a lot, and I didn't feel like I learned much of anything I can carry with me. It's a good idea for a book, just not substantive enough for a curious layman like me. That being said, I think a stockbroker or economic history buff will appreciate "What Goes Up" for being a Norton Anthology of famous moments on Wall Street, something to refer to and augment their deeper understanding of what goes up, and on.
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19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good information, interesting format, October 10, 2005
This review is from: What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen (Hardcover)
In a not-too-typical style of narration, the author explores various viewpoints regarding a wide variety of Wall Street related events. The format is different in the sense, that entire chapters are made of quasi-independent paragraphs which are direct quotes or paraphrases from different people. It gives the book a distinct look, not necessarily a format the average business-related book follows. In that sense, the book takes a little getting used to. However, the book does provide some very interesting insights on some of the events (sort of backstage news) that have roiled Wall Street over its existence. The business-info-buff will most certainly find this book to be useful, though this reviewer didn't find the book very entertaining or well-organized. A good read.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting history from the primary sources, March 25, 2006
This review is from: What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels Who Made It Happen (Hardcover)
Eric Weiner uses the words of the titans of Wall Street to describe the ups and downs of Wall Street's long march. Chapters are organized around rough themes (the early tycoons, junk bonds, the emergence of conglomerates, etc.) with alternating paragraphs written by the leaders of the great Wall Street firms.
The primary sources provide direct insight to what happened in a very easy to read format. As a survey, the book provides a readers digest version of much of the popular banking literature. (The chapter on leveraged buyouts has just enough detail to allow one to skip Barbarians at the Gate.) Very efficient background material for anyone entering the field.
There are two limitations with the style and direction of the book. By it's nature, the book focuses primarily on New York banking, and misses much of the story of globalization. The other is that by using people's own words, one has to read between the lines to find the real story. Both limitations are unavoidable given the intention and form of the book.
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