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House of Cards

House of Cards

How Wall Street's Gamblers Broke Capitalism

Summary

From the author of The Last Tycoons, William D. Cohan's international bestseller House of Cards: How Wall Street's Gamblers Broke Capitalism dissects the collapse of Bear Stearns and the beginning of the financial crisis.

It was Wall Street's toughest investment bank, taking risks where others feared to tread, run by testosterone-fuelled gamblers who hung a sign saying 'let's make nothing but money' over the trading floor.

Yet in March 2008 the 85-year-old firm Bear Stearns was brought to its knees - and global economic meltdown began. With unprecedented access to the people at the eye of the financial storm, William Cohan tells the outrageous story of how Wall Street's entire house of cards came crashing down.

'A page-turner ... hard to put down, especially thanks to its dishy, often profane, quotes from insiders ... Read it, learn - and weep'
  Observer

'A fly-on-the-wall record ... Cohan is a master of this genre. He perfectly captures the raw voice of Wall Street ... like Damon Runyon updated by Martin Scorsese'
  Spectator Business

'Action-packed ... gripping'
  Sunday Times

'A devastating account of the foul-mouthed, money-grabbing men responsible for Bear Stearns' collapse'
  Business Week

William D. Cohan was an award-winning investigative journalist before embarking on a seventeen-year career as an investment banker on Wall Street. His first book, The Last Tycoons, about Lazard, won the 2007 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award and was a New York Times bestseller. His second book, House of Cards, also a bestseller, is an account of the last days of Bear Stearns & Co.

Reviews

  • It is too early to say who will emerge as the definitive chroniclers of this crisis, but this book by William Cohan ... seems likely to end up as one of the key texts
    The Observer

About the author

William D. Cohan

William D. Cohan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Silence, Money and Power, House of Cards, and The Last Tycoons, which won the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. He is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair and writes a biweekly opinion column in The New York Times. He has also written for theFinancial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Fortune, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Washington Post, among other publications. Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
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