Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street (Paperback)

~ (Author) "IT WAS sometime early in 1986, the first year of the decline of my firm, Salomon Brothers..." (more)
Key Phrases: deep throat, mortgage traders, mortgage trading department, Salomon Brothers, Wall Street, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

As described by Lewis, liar's poker is a game played in idle moments by workers on Wall Street, the objective of which is to reward trickery and deceit. With this as a metaphor, Lewis describes his four years with the Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers, from his bizarre hiring through the training program to his years as a successful bond trader. Lewis illustrates how economic decisions made at the national level changed securities markets and made bonds the most lucrative game on the Street. His description of the firm's personalities and of the events from 1984 through the crash of October 1987 are vivid and memorable. Readers of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities ( LJ 11/15/87) are likely to enjoy this personal memoir. BOMC and Fortune Book Club selection.
- Joseph Barth, U.S. Military Acad . Lib., West Point, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Lewis has a gift for the rapid portrait. Unless you find his flippant one-liners irritating, it is a pleasure to be guided around the jungle of bond markets by his reminiscences and trenchant asides. . . . Apart from the belly-laughs, one of the triumphs of Liar's Poker is that it makes the financial complexities of investment banking and the markets accessible to the layman. . . . Everything from yields to selling short is painlessly clarified in the course of the narrative. (Victor Mallet - London Review of Books )

Lewis takes the reader through his schoolboy's progress as trainee and geek in the trading room, to high-powered swashbuckler. The author has a puckish appreciation for the comic. Yet he also has the knack of explaining precisely how complex deals really work. He provides the most readable explanation I've seen anywhere of the origin within Salomon Brothers of the mortgage-backed securities market....It is good history, and a good story. (National Review )

Vivid and memorable. (Library Journal ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140143459
• ISBN-13: 978-0140143454
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (244 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,780 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It made me laugh, it made me cry......, July 30, 1996

By A Customer

**** I read this book in my last undergraduate year of college. At that time, Lewis provided me with an eye-opening, first-hand glance of life in the high-flying world of finance (1980's) and the personalities that drove that period forward. It was relevant reading material since I was intending to pursue a career in the financial services industry, and here was a book written by a former bond salesman in the New York and London offices of Salomon Brothers. **** Nevertheless, this book is not limited to only those interested or involved in the world of business. This book is for anybody who is curious how the S&L crisis emerged; how the Reagan administration's deregulations affected the salaries of a select few in the US financial industry; how much the tax burden of the average American citizen grew as a result. This book is perfect for those who dislike the dry writing found in historical textbooks. **** Lewis's anecdotes will leave you in stitches! I am now working in the financial services industry. Most of the people I run into seem to have read this book at an earlier age and most enjoyed it as much as I did. **NOTE** Other "financial history" books that could be compared to "Liar's Poker", but written with very different writing styles: "Merchants of Debt" by George Anders; "Barbarians at the Gate".

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read, November 8, 1999

By A Customer

What a great read. A friend of mine recommended this to me and I can say that it certainly was a refreshing read.

This book tells you about some of the influential people who shaped Salomon Brothers and Wall St in the eighties. I never realised the history that went with Salomon Brothers.

The style is great and I can really identify with the author's early years going through the stages of obtaining and starting a job. Some of the characters in the book are hilarious, you can only just believe they are real.

Only one complaint: sometimes the author goes on for quite a long time with his history e.g. the history of junk bonds and the history of various people in SB. I only wish that there was more about the author's story.

Only one gripe though, and it can't prevent this from being a 5 star book.

Buy it now! Thanks to the book, I am now constantly searching for books like this but this is the only one I have found recounting the story of a salesman as opposed to a trader.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One hand, one million dollars, no tears., July 15, 2003

By	john purcell "johneric99" (Purcellville, VA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

In the 1980's, Michael Lewis was a neophyte bond salesman for Salomon Brothers in New York and London for four years. Liar's Poker is a high-stakes game the traders, salesmen, and executives play each afternoon, but it is also a metaphor for the Salomon culture of extreme risk-taking with immediate payoffs and clear winners and losers.

This is the story of how Lewis survived the training program, inept but mean-spirited management, an aborted take-over even featuring a white knight, layoffs and the 1987 market crash before quitting to find his real calling as a business journalist. While Lewis's career did not take off quickly, he eventually became a highly paid producer, although not in the league of the true top dogs.

Lewis tells the real story of Wall Street in both go-go and crash days with self-deprecating humor enlivened with his ecletic wit. Colorful and well-known Wall Street characters appear such as Michael Milken, Lazlo Birini, Warren Buffett, Bill Simon, Sr. and John Guetfruend. All business students need to read this as even those with advanced degrees in finance such as myself, will learn how things really work. The story of how the junk bond and collateralized mortgage backed security markets emerge is told to fill in a chapter in financial history. Perhaps most interesting is some of the political machinations, rampant at Salomon, which lead for example for Salomon to ignore the junk bond market, allowing others to flourish and eventually attempt to take-over Salomon using junk bonds.

Lewis also describes for all investors the conflicts of interest and lack of governance on Wall Street long before Eliot Spitzer and Arthur Levitt became the champions of the little guy. My next step is to read Lewis's later books.