Five books on the high finance culture of the past 40 years

Andrew Lipstein is the author of Last Resort (2022), a novel “you’ll think about ... for weeks after you read the last pages” (Los Angeles Times). He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and son.

Lipstein's new novel is The Vegan.

At Lit Hub he tagged five books that "give us a window into not only the financial preoccupations of different eras, but the larger moral issues their unique cultures wrestled with.... Together they trace the history of high finance culture over the past 40 years, from the barbarous heyday of the eighties to the tech-obsessed venture capitalists of today." One title on the list:

Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis

Considered the high finance memoir, Liar’s Poker is more like a survey course of all of the hijinks, bravado, and sliminess of eighties finance—a world that often grates against today’s progressive values. (One of the most famous terms from the book is “Big Swinging Dick,” used to refer to high performers.) Lit with shocking characters spewing unforgettable lines, and engrossing from cover to cover, it also serves as a primer on the history of finance—and bond trading, specifically. As the debut work of Michael Lewis, it also laid the tracks for what would become possibly the greatest financial writing career of all time.

Read about another entry on the list.

Liar's Poker is among David Charters's top ten books about bankers and Stephen Frey's five best books about life on Wall Street.

--Marshal Zeringue