The next book in our Dave Reads series is another classic and entertaining book in the business book category, Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker.
Michael Lewis has written numerous great books on similar business subjects in a hilarious voice. You may recognize his name from the movie, The Big Short. This book is the story of bond salesmen in the 1980s. I found myself laughing out loud nearly every time I sat down with the book.
My favorite passage in this book is when he is talking about what they did in the bull pen (I think that’s what they called it) when Chernobyl happened – One of the senior brokers, Alexander, a pseudonym, who was a salesman who moves from Salomon’s London office to the New York building; counseled Lewis to buy oil because the drop in nuclear power would need to be made up by burning fossil fuels. Shortly thereafter, Alexander calls again and tells him to buy potatoes because all the potatoes in Europe will be contaminated and there will be a massive market for American potatoes. This all happened the same day of the Chernobyl disaster. Millions of people were dying and being relocated and these guys were goofing around and buying oil and potatoes. Cold. Brilliant. Hilarious (in a dark humor way).
The entire book is chock-full of that kind of thing. Rapid-fire. I think I read the entire 300-something page frat-boy goof-fest in about four days. You’ll love it.
Stay tuned for the next Dave Reads post where I will be putting down my thoughts on a business book I found particularly interesting and entertaining; When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein.
