Only aims to entertain. ( )

Disappointed by the audiobook. There are no notifications when you've reached the end of a disk. Perhaps I should have read the summary a bit more carefully, as this is just an overview of past events - a collection of articles in the media while those events were happening. I was hoping to hear more of the Lewis insight and investigations akin to Moneyball. Maybe that's what got cut out in this abridged version. ( )

Twenty years of writing proving that money makes liars and fools of us all. ( )

Loved this book. Loved reading articles written during the financial chaos; it gives incredible perspective to what people were thinking and feeling. This book is not a thorough analysis of what happened to cause the various periods of financial instability, but it serves as a reminder even the best minds in the world can't predict periods of instability and sometimes can't even help return the market to stability. ( )

An Interesting Look Back

The newest book edited by Michael Lewis, aptly named "Panic" is a collection of previously published articles before, during, and after the market collapses of 1987, the Asian financial crisis of 1998, the Dot Com bust in 2001 and the latest Subprime mortgage meltdown.

Though, none of the books contents represents any new analysis or synthesis of the events past, nor is much contextualization given by Lewis of the articles and events, I still felt that the book was a good read. Mostly because it was refreshing to re-read what people were feeling at the time. They give a snapshot in time of the over-confidence, anxieties, and overall market psychology that underlies the whole system.

Throughout the book there are some great quotes and one-liners such as "I guess if you're neither a bull nor a bear, you're a chicken." Or great anecdotes that illustrate the silliness of some of these ventures such as the story of Books-a-million or "From Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Mostly though, as a reader one comes away with the feeling that none of us are omniscient. Not the stock gurus, the appraisers, the agents, the economists, etc... We're all flying by the seat of our pants and nobody knows what is going to happen next, your guess is as good as mine. Which means, anytime you hear some Harvard MBA "analyst" tell you what the market's gonna do, you're just as well-off doing the opposite.

I do highly recommend this book, not just because I'm a Michael Lewis fan, but because I think the book illustrates both the complexity and the folly of the economic markets. There's no trying to make sense of it all, because there is no sense to begin with. ( )