The Money Culture Paperback – February 14, 2011

Michael Lewis never seems to fail at making a complex topic seem very simple. He also does it with incredible humor. This book takes you on a wild ride that'll definitely make you put the book down at times and go "were these people serious?!"...in the first 80 pages of this you'll already see why 2007-08 happened, and then you'll realize you have 200 more pages of this craziness to go!

Michael Lewis wrote one of the great popular books about Wall Street, Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street. It is a classic of what life was like on Wall Street during the time when mortgage backed securities, something we're hearing a lot about currently, was just getting off the ground. He also wrote the bestseller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which is a great baseball book. This collection of pieces written right before and after Liar's Poker is all right, but it is not his best work.I have a high tolerance for bad writing if I am interested in the subject manner, but even I had trouble getting through some of the early pieces in here. Perhaps Lewis had to get all this poor sophomoric writing out of his system before he could write decent books. If the pieces collected in Money Culture are what it takes to get to Moneyball, then so be it.Still, from a reader's standpoint, don't bother with this one, read Liar's Poker and Moneyball instead.

Interesting book, and well written as are ALL of Michael Lewis's works. Nevertheless, as interesting and informative as it is.... in the end, it offers no solutions, and when you turn the last page you are left with the feeling of "OK, now what? That's it?" After revealing all of the schemes, regulations and methods used to scam the market.... ANNNNND the vast majority of investors, the book needs to suggest or outline those ways that the system needs to be changed to absolutely STOP the continued use of these methods, and to force the exchanges to cease and desist assisting the various HFT organizations, and to block the various Goldman - Sachs's of the world from EVER being involved in ANY banking or stock market activity in the future.....

Enjoyable book. If you lived through the turbulent late '80's you will recognize the subplots. If not, it is a fairly good diary ( story ) of those times and some of the players. But, one consistency, Michael Lewis continues to shed light on the myriad of ways Wall Street banking types line their pockets with unsuspecting target's money.

Great read, best after reading The Big Short and Flash Boys as context would be better understood. Thoroughly enjoyed the depth of perspective and wit throughout.

This is really a collection of essays Lewis wrote for magazines and newspapers, many of them before he wrote "Liar's Poker". As such they are a mixed bag both in content and writing style. Perhaps the most entertaining are his accounts of the coming of American-style finance and ambition to Europe, and I also enjoyed the essays on Japan. However other essays are best simply because they are short.If you are a Lewis fan and want a little light reading, fine...read this book. If you haven't read his other books, go read those first.

These pieces capture Lewis in early career, more a story-chasing journalist than a fly-on-the-wall explicator game-changing epoch-defining economic trends. Though dated and less inspired than his later books, this is still vintage Lewis.

Michael Lewis is as reliably excellent as he always is. The book is a bit dated in 2012, since we've heard about this stuff for so many years, but it's still a good read, even for non-financial types.