Martin Mayer has written a number of books on the financial industry, but it doesn't seem to do him much good this time around. He can't quite seem to make up his mind whether he wants to write a serious book, or a book with a lot of the gruesomely funny stories about S&L defalcations. At one point in one of the two (!) epilogues, he tries to explain away the title of the book, but he never quite comes to grips with it, just as he never quite comes to grips with what, precisely, went wrong. He doesn't appear to think it was organized crime (as "Inside Job" seems to suggest -- Mayer does nod to that book explicitly), and while he talks a lot about political interference, he never quite brings himself to put blame on that, nor on economic conditions. In short, the book is something of a muddle, and I wouldn't recommend it for any insights into the S&L mess. ( )