The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

(W.W. Norton) In The Big Short , Michael Lewis tells the tale of the current global financial catastrophe through a group of investors who saw the trouble coming, were not fooled by the soaring house prices, and bet money on the boom going bust. The protagonists include Steve Eisman, a one-time stock market analyst who switched into hedge funds and bet against subprime mortgage lenders, Michael Burry, a reclusive bond market expert who was among the first to exploit the money-making possibilities of credit default swaps, and Charlie Ledley, a nervous man with little investment experience who spotted mispricings and other mistakes that could be turned to huge advantages. In a dark portrait of modern American finance and its impact on the world, Lewis animates the financial intrigue, bungling, greed, muddled thinking, errors, and criminal behaviors of the millennium’s first great financial collapse. Michael Lewis’s other books include Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, Home Game, and The Blind Side .