Thursday, June 24, 2010

Another book



For a change, I splurged almost a thousand bucks to buy Roger Lowenstein's "The End of Wall Street" when I was in the US (it was not yet available in India, so I had to buy the hardback version from there). Having read and really liked "When Genius Failed", I had high expectations from ol' Rog. However, I was a tad disappointed at the end (which also explains why it took me more than a month to finish this baby - or roughly 15x the usual time).

The book reads like a bland retelling of the furiously moving events in September 2008, when Lehman went bust and the world got into a tailspin. While it goes way back, to 2005-06, to explain the genesis of the problem, it does not offer any new insights into why whatever happened, happened. Most people who read the news (or visited Bloomberg's website) would know all this stuff.

Comparisons are odious, but if I compare this to Michael Lewis's "The Big Short", I would short Mr. Lowenstein and go long Mr. Lewis. As opposed to The Big Short's human interest and genuine freshness of content, The End of Wall Street does not offer either. Nor does the title seem very apt!

2 comments:

SeedhiBaat said...

Disappointed to know that you are not initiated to Flipkart - the coolest place to shop for books.

The particular book in question is available for 764 Rs. with a guaranteed delivery time of 3 business days. In all likelihood, you'll get it within the 2 days.

A shameless Flipkart fan and user since 2008.

Megha

Nothing Spectacular said...

thanks megha for the tip - will definitely check it out!