Nonfiction – Business, 2008 Financial Crisis
Released October, 2009
626 Pages
Bottom Line: Read it.
Affiliate Link: Buy from Amazon
Plot Summary of Too Big to Fail:
The definitive book about the overall 2008 financial crisis, focusing on JP Morgan’s takeover of Bear Sterns and the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
My Thoughts on Too Big to Fail:
There have been many books written about the financial crisis, but I thought this was the one that best covered the overall scenario during the most critical months in the fall of 2008. Like Michael Lewis, Sorkin excels at explaining confusing financial concepts more clearly than most financial journalists.
Sorkin includes every Wall Street domino that fell (and those that managed to stay standing), AIG, and critical government players (Geithner, Paulson, Chris Cox, and Sheila Bair). He does a fantastic job of taking the reader inside that boardroom at the New York Fed where the secret meeting between all the big bank heads took place and conveying the lightening speed at which deals were getting made and falling through.
Sorkin does not get into the detailed “why” of the financial crisis – The Big Short by Michael Lewis is the book to read on that question – but, he manages to make everything that happened once the dominoes started teetering thrilling reading.
Too Big to Fail is on my Business Books List.