Liar's Poker - Book Review

Traveling down time allots me adequate opportunity to knock out a novel. Normally, I try to read something new, but this time I went back and reread Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker. I'm glad I did.

Published by W.W. Norton and Co. in 1989, the book received critical acclaim pretty much everywhere. When I read it the first time back in 1990 I was between undergrad and grad school. To be honest, I didn't like it. I assumed, at the time, that maybe I was too immature or naive to wrap my mind the vast amounts of tongue-in-cheek humor. Basically, I was giving the literary world the benefit of my doubt. Now, twenty years later, chock full of my own sarcastic wit, I still don't think it is bestseller worthy. But, what do I know? I'm not Oprah. (See? There is a little of my own.)

Don't get me wrong, the book is good, damn good.

The beauty of this novel is in its outrageous and true tales of the salesmen of Salomon Brothers that created the bond trading industry and almost ruined the American economy in the 1980's. Lewis introduced characters to the general non-business public like Michael Milken and John Gutfruend. Even twenty years later, after the the "junk-bond king" did his time, Salomon went under and thousands of CNN news stories filled cable television, I still find the tidbits of insider information enlightening.

Lewis is a master of the metaphor and simile. This talent keeps the reader's imagination on overdrive. It also exhibits the work the author put into his work. He just didn't regurgitate a story, but told it in humorous, anecdotal metaphors. His style is amazing and one I wish I could capture as my own.

Kinda fitting, I chose this crucial time in our current economy to reread Michael Lewis' Wall Street tale. I did it on purpose, of course. Many parallels in our economic makeup exist today with the state of the economy after the 1987 stock market crash. Difference being we had much farther to fall this time around. One thing is certain, history does repeat itself.

This book is worth the read. Very well written. And for non-fiction...entertaining.

Pick it up. Or pick it up again.

Al, the Travel Valet

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