Books

Liar's Poker

A sharp, funny, and deeply revealing look at Wall Street culture before it learned how to disguise itself better.

Michael Lewis writes 1980s Salomon Brothers so vividly that bond trading starts looking like a weird social experiment with money. Funny book. Mildly horrifying book. Very good book.

What stayed with me

What stayed was the absurdity. Michael Lewis lets the culture indict itself through detail. The bravado is often funny, but the humor also makes the moral looseness harder to ignore.

What it changed

It changed how I think about financial institutions. I started paying closer attention to culture as a market force in its own right. Numbers may drive decisions, but status and worldview often shape the range of what even feels thinkable.

Why I still keep it on the shelf

I still return to this book because it makes the human texture of finance visible. Once you see that texture, institutional behavior becomes easier to read.