Review - Liar's Poker 🃏

I wanted to read this because I’m a big fan of the movies adapted from Michael Lewis’s work (The Big Short, Moneyball) and because I really liked The Big Short (book) and thought it was important work. Liar’s Poker is the breakout first book by Lewis, and I definitely enjoyed it less than the three other books of his that I’ve read.

I was certainly curious about the 80s investment banking culture that it depicts going in, but it didn’t hold my interest. Turns out the 2008 financial crisis (the focus of The Big Short) is a more interesting topic than the drama and office politics of 80s investment banks, and Jim Clark (central in The New New Thing) is a much more interesting character than anyone found within the pages of Liar’s Poker.

I may have also liked it less because I find the book’s characters, the investment bankers with their money obsessed amorality, pretty unpleasant. They were, almost as a rule, bullying, greedy, chauvinistic, and duplicitous.

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